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Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words, "Eat or be Eaten!" and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!

— Erasmus Darwin Phytologia: or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (1800)

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More quotes by Erasmus Darwin

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

And the mass starts into a million suns;
Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issue from the first.

The Botanic Garden (1791)

On the blasted heath
Fell Upas sits, the hydra-tree of death.

Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course
Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse;
Whose hungry larva eats its living way,
Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day.

The Temple of Nature (1804)

The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young
Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng.
The cruel larva mines its silky course,
And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse.

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