Skip to content

Mr. Darwin labours to show, and with no small success, that all true classification in zoology and botany is, in fact, genealogical, and that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, while they often imagined that they were looking for some unknown plan of creation.

— Charles Lyell The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863)

Another quote →

More quotes by Charles Lyell

In a rude state of society all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.

Principles of Geology (1832)

Thus community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent, however much the structure of the adult may have been modified.

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863)

It will be necessary to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis because the most extravagant systems were often invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent.

Principles of Geology (1832)

But exactly in proportion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting.

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863)

Strabo rejects this theory as insufficient to account for all the phenomena, and he proposes one of his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate.

Principles of Geology (1832)

All Charles Lyell quotes →

Attribution

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