A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time, Living Well, Time
A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Animals
Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Wildlife
No one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvellous structure and properties.
—Charles Darwin
Man is descended from a hairy-tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in his habits.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Ancestors
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evil
I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evolution
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Explanation
No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears, no gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty’s ears; not the bright stars, which night’s blue arch adorn; nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn; shine with such lustre as the tear that flows down virtue’s manly cheek for others’ woes.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Sympathy
The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Animals
Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Experiment
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Art
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Poverty
What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Nature
The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Diety
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Arguments
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Wishes
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Ignorance
I am not the least afraid to die.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Dying, Death
The obedient steel with living instinct moves, and veers forever to the pole it loves.
—Charles Darwin
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evolution
I love fools experiments. I am always making them.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Mistakes
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Beginnings
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Control, Self-Control
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- E. O. Wilson American Sociobiologist
- Humphry Davy British Chemist
- Thomas Henry Huxley English Biologist
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson British Poet
- John Muir American Naturalist
- James Cook English Explorer, Cartographer
- Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux Scottish Jurist, Politician
- Samuel Johnson British Essayist
- William Ewart Gladstone English Liberal Statesman
- Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
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