Charles Lyell Quotes About Earth

Quotes about: Earth

• 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

  Science, Men, Mind

  Charles Lyell (1863). “The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation by Charles Lyell”, p.506

• 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

  Science, Perfection, Wish

  Sir Charles Lyell (1845). “Travels in North America, in the Years 1841-2: With Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia”, p.15

• 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

  Ordinary, Earth, Violence

• 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

  Science, Escaping, Extinction

  Sir Charles Lyell (1853). “Principles of geology ; or, The modern changes of the earth and its inhabitants considered as illustrative of geology”, p.696

• 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

  Philosophy, Science, Men

  Charles Lyell, M. J. S. Rudwick (1990). “Principles of Geology”, p.163, University of Chicago Press

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