James Dwight Dana Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

The grand old Book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred word.

James Dwight Dana
Mr Hall's hypothesis [concerning the origin of mountains] has its cause for subsidence, but none for the lifting of the thickened sunken crust into mountains. It is a theory for the origin of mountains, with the origin of mountains left out.

James Dwight Dana
Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery.

James Dwight Dana
The profoundest facts in the earth's history prove that the oceans have always been oceans.

James Dwight Dana
The reply is a simple negative; and a single fact establishes its truth. The reef-forming coral zoophytes, as has been shown, cannot grow at greater depths than 100 or 120 feet; and therefore in seas deeper than this, the formation or growth of reefs over the bottom is impossible.

James Dwight Dana
Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to "animalcules," have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance.

James Dwight Dana
There can be no real conflict between the two Books of the Great Author. Both are revelations made by Him to man,-the earlier telling of God-made harmonies coming up from the deep past, and rising to their height when man appeared, the later teaching man's relations to his Maker, and speaking of loftier harmonies in the eternal future.

James Dwight Dana
A map of the moon...should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces.

James Dwight Dana
Geology is rapidly taking its place as an introduction to the higher history of man. If the author has sought to exalt a favorite science, it has been with the desire that man-in whom geological history had its consummation, the prophecies of the successive ages their fulfilment-might better comprehend his own nobility and the true purpose of his existence.

James Dwight Dana
Geology is eminently an out-door science; for strata, rivers, oceans, mountains, valleys, volcanoes, cannot be taken into a recitation room. Sketches and sections serve a good purpose in illustrating the objects of which the science treats, but they do not set aside the necessity of seeing the objects themselves.

James Dwight Dana
Geology may seem to be audacious in its attempts to unveil the mysteries of creation. Yet what it reveals are only some of the methods by which the Creator has performed his will; and many deeper mysteries it leaves untouched.

James Dwight Dana
Science has no explanation for the origin of Life. The living organism instead of being a product of physical or chemical forces, controls these forces for its highest forms.

James Dwight Dana
I think it better to doubt until you know. Too many people assert and then let others doubt.

James Dwight Dana
The scrutinizing eye of science penetrates with far-reaching sight the system of things about us, and in the dim limits of vision reads everywhere the word mystery.

James Dwight Dana