Skip to content

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

— Erasmus Darwin The Botanic Garden (1791)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

The first concept of a 'big bang' theory of the universe; John Carey, Eyewitness to Science (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 47

More quotes by Erasmus Darwin

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

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.

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.

All Erasmus Darwin quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Erasmus Darwin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.