Erasmus Darwin Quotes

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• A fool is a man who never tried an experiment in his life.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Men, Fool, Experiments

  In a letter from Maria Edgeworth to Sophy Ruxton, 9 March 1792: F. V. Barry (ed.) 'Maria Edgeworth: Chosen Letters' (1931)

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• [Retirement] is a dangerous experiment, and generally ends in either drunkenness or hypochrondriacism.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Retirement, Ends, Dangerous

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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

  Nature, Science, Law

  Erasmus Darwin (1800). “Phytologia; Or, The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening: With the Theory of Draining Morasses, and with an Improved Construction of the Drill Plough”, p.556

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• The great CREATOR of all things has infinitely diversified the works of his hands, but has at the same time stamped a certain similitude on the features of nature, that demonstrates to us, that the whole is one family of one parent.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Nature, Science, Hands

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• To respect the cat is the beginning of the aesthetic sense.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Cat, Purring Cats, Cat Love

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• Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
  Was born and rais’d in Ocean’s pearly caves
  First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
  Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
  These, as successive generations bloom,
  New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
  Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
  And breathing realms of fin, and feet and wing.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Spring, Ocean, Moving

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• Life is a forced state! I am surprized that we live, rather than that our friends die.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Life, Science, States

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• A fool, Mr, Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Fool, Made

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• In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Feelings, Facts, Evolution

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• Another thing very injurious to the child is the tying and cutting of the navel string too soon, which should always be left till the child has not only repeatedly breathed but till all pulsation in the cord ceases. As otherwise the child is much weaker than it ought to be, a part of the blood being left in the placenta which ought to have been in the child and at the same time the placenta does not so naturally collapse, and withdraw itself from the sides of the uterus, and is not therefore removed with so much safety and certainty.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Children, Cutting, Blood

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• So erst the Sage [Pythagoras] with scientific truth In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth; With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass From life to life, a transmigrating mass; How the same organs, which to-day compose The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose, May with to-morrow's sun new forms compile, Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile. Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan, That man should ever be the friend of man; Should eye with tenderness all living forms, His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Brother, Hero, Eye

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• We hence acquire this sublime and interesting idea; that all the calcareous mountains in the world, and all the strata of clay, coal, marl, sand, and iron, which are incumbent on them, are MONUMENTS OF THE PAST FELICITY OF ORGANIZED NATURE!

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Past, Ideas

  Erasmus Darwin (1800). “Phytologia, or the philosophy of agriculture and gardening; with the theory of draining morasses and with an improved construction of the drill plough”, p.560

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• E canchis amnia.
  Everything from shells.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Shells, Evolution

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• Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new animal, but it is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent; since a part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent; and therefore in strict language it cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production; and therefore it may retain some of the habits of the parent-system. (1794)

  Erasmus Darwin

  Animal, Parent, Imperfection

  Erasmus Darwin (1794). “Zoonomia; Or, The Laws of Organic Life ...”, p.480

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

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Issues, Earth

  Erasmus Darwin (1791). “The Botanic Garden; a Poem, in Two Parts. Part I. Containing The Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes”, p.9

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• I much condole with you on your late loss... pains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;--Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Pain, Loss, Mind

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• Opium is the only drug to' be rely'd on-all the boasted nostrums only take up time, and as the disease [is] often of short duration, or of small quantity, they have gain'd credit which they do not deserve.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Drug, Credit, Disease

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• The colours of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the colour of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are coloured like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-coloured bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Nature, Flower, Science

  Erasmus Darwin (1807). “The Botanic Garden: A Poem, in Two Parts: Part I. Containing The Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants”

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• The hypochondriac disease consists in indigestion and consequent flatulency, with anxiety or want of pleasurable sensation.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Anxiety, Disease

  Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Latham Mitchill (1818). “Zoonomia; Or The Laws of Organic Life”, p.112

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• Some philosophers have been of opinion that our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment, which become forever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of existence ... I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation, or production of the embryon, or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Animal, Ideas

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• From the sexual, or amatorial, generation of plants new varieties, or improvements, are frequently obtained; as many of the young plants from seeds are dissimilar to the parent, and some of them superior to the parent in the qualities we wish to possess... Sexual reproduction is the chef d'oeuvre, the master-piece of nature.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Parent, Quality

  Erasmus Darwin (1968). “The essential writings of Erasmus Darwin”

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• I am sorry the infernal Divinities, who visit mankind with diseases, and are therefore at perpetual war with Doctors, should have prevented my seeing all you great Men at Soho to-day-Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotecnical, will be on the wing, bandy'd like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers! while poor I, I by myself I, imprizon'd in a post chaise, am joggled, and jostled, and bump'd, and bruised along the King's high road, to make war upon a pox or a fever!

  Erasmus Darwin

  Kings, Sorry, War

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• There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Thinking, Physicians

  Erasmus Darwin, Robert Waring Darwin (1794). “Zoonomia; or, The laws of organic life ...”, p.2

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• The Reproductions of the living Ens
  From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence...
  Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells,
  And coral-insects build their radiate shells...
  Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,
  And fathers live transmitted in their sons;
  Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,
  The same their manners, and the same their minds.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Running, Sex, Father

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• Hence when a person is in great pain, the cause of which he cannot remove, he sets his teeth firmly together, or bites some substance between them with great vehemence, as another mode of violent exertion to produce a temporary relief. Thus we have the proverb where no help can be has in pain, 'to grin and abide;' and the tortures of hell are said to be attended with 'gnashing of teeth.'Describing a suggestion of the origin of the grin in the present form of a proverb, 'to grin and bear it.'

  Erasmus Darwin

  Pain, Together, Vehemence

  Erasmus Darwin (1818). “Zoonomia”, p.330

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