The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brain... & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes.

It's not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.

Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created...that a cat should play with mice.

Traveling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance.