Charles Darwin Origin Quotations

I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.

It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction...

Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.