Alex > Alex's Quotes

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”
― Charles Darwin

“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”
― Charles Darwin

“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”
― Charles Darwin

“...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.”
― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”
― Charles Darwin

“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.”
― Charles Darwin, Notebooks

“Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Much handled things are always soft(27).”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“Whatever's burning in me is mine”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing, or nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence.”
― Audre Lorde

“Come windless invader
I am a carnival of
Stars, a poem of blood.”
― Sonia Sanchez

“I cannot tell the truth about anything unless I confess being a student, growing and learning something new every day. The more I learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes.”
― Sonia Sanchez

“How to dance
in blood and
remain sane?”
― Sonia Sanchez, Morning Haiku

“but i am what i
am. woman. alone
amid all this noise.”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people.”
― Sonia Sanchez

“This earth is hard symmetry
This earth of feverish war
This earth inflamed with hate”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“I shall become a collector of me and put meat on my soul”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“i saw you
vincent van
gogh perched
on those pennsylvania
cornfields communing
amid secret black
bird societies. yes.”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems