The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever.

With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms.

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.

It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.

Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.

On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land.