Charles Lyell Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

So long as physiologists continued to believe that man had not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they might, with good reason, withhold their assent from the doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races; but the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which different communities may have spread slowly, and become isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions, whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living.

Charles Lyell
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
Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed within the last three thousand years the devastation by deluge 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
The discovery of other systems in the boundless regions of space was the triumph of astronomy — to trace the same system through various transformations — to behold it at successive eras adorned with different hills and valleys, lakes and seas, and peopled with new inhabitants, was the delightful need of geological research.

Charles Lyell
To assume that the evidence of the beginning or end of so vast a scheme lies within the reach of our philosophical inquiries, or even of our speculations, appears to us inconsistent with a just estimate of the relations which subsist between the finite powers of man and the attributes of an Infinite and Eternal Being.

Charles Lyell
Whatever be the power which has for hundreds of times repeopled the Earth with tribes of plants & animals as fast as they became extinct, that power I have always held is still in full & unabated action as is its antagonist or destructive power.

Charles Lyell
When we are unable to explain the monuments of past changes, it is always more probable that the difference arises from our ignorance of all the existing agents, or all their possible effects in an indefinite lapse of time, than that some cause was formerly in operation which has ceased to act...

Charles Lyell
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
Then might those genera of animals return, of which the memorials are preserved in the ancient rocks of our continents. The huge iguanodon might reappear in the woods, and the ichthyosaurs in the sea, while the pterodactyl might flit again through umbrageous groves of tree-ferns.

Charles Lyell
At successive periods of the past, the same area of land and water has been inhabited by species of animals and plants even more distinct than those which now people the antipodes, or which now co-exist in the arctic, temperate, and tropical zones.

Charles Lyell
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
If it be true that delivery be the first, second, and third requisite in a popular orator, it is no less certain that travel is of first, second and third importance to those who desire to originate just and comprehensive views concerning the structure of our globe.

Charles Lyell
Until we habituate ourselves to contemplate the possibility of an indefinite lapse of time having been comprised within each of the modern periods of earth's history, we shall be in danger of forming most erroneous and partial views of geology.

Charles Lyell
In vein do we aspire to assign limits to the works of creation in space, whether we examine the starry heavens, or that world of minute animalcules which is revealed to us by the microscope. We are prepared, therefore, to find that in time also the confines of the universe lie beyond the reach of mortal ken.

Charles Lyell