Quote#Books & Reading
I have rarely read anything which has interested me more, though I…
Quote byCharles Darwin · 1809–1882
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887), volume III, chapter VI: "Miscellanea", page 252; letter to William Ogle (22 February 1882).
English (original)
I have rarely read anything which has interested me more, though I have not read as yet more than a quarter of the book proper. From quotations which I had seen, I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
— Charles Darwin
More from Charles Darwin
… cell of a tentacle, showing the various forms successively assumed by the aggregated masses of protoplasm.
Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation.
[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.
The Beagle staid at St. Helena five days, during which time I lived in the clouds in the centre of the Isd.—It is a curious little world within itself; the habitable part is surrounded by a broad band of black desolate rocks, as if the …
Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct.
The subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim "de minimis lex non curat," does not apply to science.