Erasmus Darwin Quotes

38 Sourced Quotes

Dull atheist, could a giddy dance Of atoms lawlessly hurl'd Construct so wonderful, so wise, So harmonised a world?

Erasmus Darwin
On vermil beds in Idria's mighty caves The living silver rolls its ponderous waves.

Erasmus Darwin
In earth, sea, air, around, below, above, Life's subtle woof in Nature's loom is wove, Points glued to points in living line extends, Touch'd by some goad approach the bending ends.

Erasmus Darwin
Now, happier lot! Enlighten'd realms possess The learned labours of the immortal Press; Nursed on whose lap the births of science thrive, And rising Arts the wrecks of Time survive.

Erasmus Darwin
All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.

Erasmus Darwin
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
Rest, silver butterflies, your quivering wings, Alight, ye beetles, from your airy rings; Ye painted moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl, Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl; Glitter, ye glow-worms, on your mossy beds; Descend, ye spiders, on your lengthened threads!

Erasmus Darwin
Or mark with shining letters Kunckel's name In the pale phosphor's self-consuming flame.

Erasmus Darwin
When air's pure essence joins the vital flood, And with phosphoric acid dyes the blood, Your virgin trains the transient heat dispart, And lead the soft combustion round the heart...

Erasmus Darwin
Hence with diffusive salt old Ocean steeps His emerald shallows, and his sapphire deeps. Oft in wide lakes, around their warmer brim In hollow pyramids the crystals swim; Or, fused by earth-born fires, in cubic blocks Shoot their white forms, and harden into rocks.

Erasmus Darwin
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.
After reading The Origin of Species

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

Erasmus Darwin
And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

Erasmus Darwin
Ethereal Powers! you chase the shooting stars, Or yoke the vollied lightnings to your cars.

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

Erasmus Darwin
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
With vast convolutions Draco holds Th' ecliptic axis in his scaly folds. O'er half the skies his neck enormous rears, And with immense meanders parts the Bears.

Erasmus Darwin
Hence sable coal his massy couch extends; And stars of gold that sparkle pyrite blends; Hence dull-eyed naphtha pours his pitchy streams, And jet uncolour'd drinks the solar beams.

Erasmus Darwin
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
Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.

Erasmus Darwin
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
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
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
A fool…is a man who never tried an experiment in his life.

Erasmus Darwin
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'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
No radiant pearl which crested Fortune wears,
No gem that twinkling hangs from Beauty's ears,
Not the bright stars which Night's blue arch adorn,
Nor rising suns that gild the vernal morn,
Shine with such lustre as the tear that flows
Down Virtue's manly cheek for others' woes.

Erasmus Darwin
By firm immutable immortal laws
Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,
Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains.

Erasmus Darwin
Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the field of air.

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

Erasmus Darwin