“Indirectly modifying the whole surface of the earth, breaking in upon any supposition of zoological continuity, and utterly unaccounted for by what we have any right to call the laws of nature.”

We must in imagination sweep off the drifted matter that clogs the surface of the ground;

The utmost movements that he allows are a slight quivering of her muscular integuments.

Our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!

Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man’s creation,

If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine

The world is not as it was when it came from its Maker’s hands.

Our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature’s record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God’s anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex.

Like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called material philosophy of the present day.

Yet Mr. Lyell will admit no greater paroxysms than we ourselves have witnessed-no periods of feverish spasmodic energy, during which the very framework of nature has been convulsed and torn asunder.

And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.

The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue’s game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying

The powers of nature are never in repose; her work never stands still.

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth.

Our book becomes more clear, and nature seems to speak to us in language so like our own, that we easily comprehend it.

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

…Five minutes from now, when everything else had dropped away and i realized the full impact of what id done, id feel my heart breaking.

Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes

If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.

The key to breaking the Taliban taboo against women and the cultural brainwashing that the Taliban imposed upon many Afghans is to get women back into the workforce.

Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?

Practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.