“It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.”

Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life.

The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.

I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.

Light may be shed on man and his origins.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.

My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Even closer, so we would be breathng the same air- if I could remember to breathe. ‘No, Tris,’ he says. A more serious look replaces his smile as he adds, ‘You look tough as nails.

It’s no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.

But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.

We’ve painted ourselves into a corner where the only choice is real nightmare – triage, epidemic disease, famine, fascism, the collapse of human rights – or a leap to an entirely different level. We’ve taken business-as-usual off the menu. Now only the extreme possibilities loom.

Remake the world, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world.

Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.