Quotes by Charles Lyell - Page 1

The present is the key to the past
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Keys
Past
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Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Good
Money
Credit
Debit
Profession
Accountant
Never
Call
His
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In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Bones
Rivers
Commonly
Drift
Graze
Meet
Plains
Valley
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Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Science
Creation Of Man
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It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.'
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Mean
Order
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'Time's noblest offspring is the last.' This line of Bishop Berkeley's expresses the real cause of the belief in progress in the animal creation.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Animal
Real
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Probably there was a beginning-it is a metaphysical question, worthy a theologian-species have begun and ended-but the analogy is faint and distant.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Analogies
Metaphysical
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In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Discovery
Hesitation
Naturally
Contradict
Investigations
Plead
Previous
Received
Reply
Tenor
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When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Apes
England
Huxley
Return
Skulls
Beheld
Cast
Professor
Skull
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I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Hypothesis
Long Ago
Southern
Thames
Period
Meeting
Northern
Suggested
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Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Antiquity
Caves
Discovery
Evidence
Proof
Derived
Discoveries
Led
Reconsider
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There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Animal
Vegetables
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That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Curiosity
Europe
Long
Remains
Valleys
Confidently
Subject
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So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Human Population
Periods
Population
Race
Safe
Single
Switzerland
Above
Considered
Conclusions
Draw
Far
Marked
Specimen
Therefore
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Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Change
Science
Curiosity
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Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Escaping
Extinction
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Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to regard them as part of the present order of Nature.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Nature
Science
Order
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No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Facts
Higher
Importance
Levels
Negative
Tools
Valleys
Attached
Higher Levels
Search
Valley
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In the course of this short tour, I became convinced that we must turn to the New World if we wish to see in perfection the oldest monuments of the earth's history, so far at least as relates to its earliest inhabitants.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Perfection
Wish
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It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Ocean
Men
Numbers
Skills
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Millions of our race are now supported by lands situated where deep seas once prevailed in earlier ages. In many districts not yet occupied by man, land animals and forests now abound where the anchor once sank into the oozy bottom.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Science
Animal
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In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Ancient
Bottom
Depth
Feet
Lakes
Mud
Shallow
Surface
Swiss
Water
Worn
Above
Observed
Parts
Piles
Projecting
Slightly
Wooden
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It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Beach
Containing
East
Familiar
Lines
Marine
Raised
Scotland
Sea
Shells
Species
Beaches
Central
Inhabiting
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In several sections, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Arms
Artificial
Buried
Mississippi
Roots
Sections
Attached
Banks
Cut
Observed
Erect
Heights
Numerous
Several
Strata
Trees
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I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.'
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Truth
Light
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It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes should one day throw light on the origin of mountains, as it must to the first astronomers, that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Fall
Moon
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Man, whose organization is regarded as the highest, departs from the vertebrate archetype; and it is because the study of anatomy is usually commenced from, and often confined to, his structure, that a knowledge of the archetype has been so long hidden from anatomists.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Knowledge
Men
Science
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Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it enquires into the causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the surface and external structure of our planet.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Kingdoms
Taken
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Each species may have had its origin in a single pair, or individual, where an individual was sufficient, and species may have been created in succession at such times and in such places as to enable them to multiply and endure for an appointed period, and occupy an appointed space on the globe.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Space
May
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Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for 'independent creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Independent
Lying
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So far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life,-sensation,-instinct,-the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason,-and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Science
Mind
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When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Numbers
Rivers
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The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Issues
Past
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In attempting to explain geological phenomena, the bias has always been on the wrong side; there has always been a disposition to reason á priori on the extraordinary violence and suddenness of changes, both in the inorganic crust of the earth, and in organic types, instead of attempting strenuously to frame theories in accordance with the ordinary operations of nature.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Earth
Ordinary
Violence
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The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Science
Past
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[My Book] will endeavour to establish the principle[s] of reasoning in ... [geology]; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which... are neither more nor less than that no causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted, but those now acting; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Science
Book
Views
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The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men.
Charles Lyell / Lawyer
Men
Science
Philosophy
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