We Are Optimists, Until We

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.

A Scientific Man Ought To Have No Wishes, No Affections, - A Mere Heart Of Stone.

If Man Had Not Been His Own Classifier, He Would Never Have Thought Of Founding A Separate Order For His Own Reception.

...all Nature Is Perverse & Will Not Do As I Wish It.

I See No Good Reason Why The Views Given This Volume [the Origin Of Species] Should Shock The Religious Feelings Of Any One. It Is Satisfactory, As Showing How Transient Such Impressions Are, To Remember That The Greatest Discovery Ever Made By Man, Namely, The Law Of Attraction Of Gravity, Was Also Attacked By Leibnitz, 'as Subversive Of Natural, And Inferentially Of Revealed, Religion.'