| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 15785 |
| QUOTATION: | From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Charles Darwin (1809–1882), British naturalist. The Origin of Species, ch. 14 (1859).
Closing words of 1859 edition. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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