Lyell Quotes

'Time's noblest offspring is the last.' This line of Bishop Berkeley's expresses the real cause of the belief in progress in the animal creation. ~ Charles Lyell

Thus, although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the dark secrets of the ocean, or the solid globe. ~ Charles Lyell

We cannot see how the evidence afforded by the unquestioned progressive development of organised existence - crowned as it has been by the recent creation of the earth's greatest wonder, MAN, can be set aside, or its seemingly necessary result withheld for a moment. When Mr. Lyell finds, as a witty friend lately reported that there had been found, a silver-spoon in grauwacke, or a locomotive engine in mica-schist, then, but not sooner, shall we enrol ourselves disciples of the Cyclical Theory of Geological formations. ~ George Poulett Scrope

Yet it would be nearly impossible to overstate Lyell's influence. The Principles of Geology went through twelve editions in his lifetime and contained notions that shaped geological thinking far into the twentieth century. Darwin took a first edition with him on the Beagle voyage and wrote afterwards that 'the great merit of the Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes22.' In short, he thought him nearly a god, as did many of his generation. It is a testament to the strength of Lyell's sway that in the 1980s, when geologists had to abandon just a part of his theory to accommodate the impact theory of extinctions, it nearly killed them. But that is another chapter. ~ Bill Bryson

That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect. ~ Charles Lyell

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man. ~ Charles Lyell

he was at heart profoundly conservative and would not keep the works of Darwin or Lyell in his study for fear they carried a contagion that might spread throughout his healthier books. He was not an especially devout man, but felt that a common faith overlooked by a benevolent God was what kept the fabric of society from tearing like a worn sheet. The idea that after all there was no essential nobility in mankind, and that his own species was not a chosen people touched by the divine, troubled him in the hours before dawn; and as with most troubling matters he elected to ignore it, until it went away. ~ Sarah Perry

There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms. ~ Charles Lyell

After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. ~ Charles Darwin

In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. ~ Charles Lyell

I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before. ~ Charles Lyell

Lyell and Murchison go travelling ~ Michael J. Benton

I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna. ~ Charles Lyell

I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to regard them as part of the present order of Nature. ~ Charles Lyell

No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them. ~ Charles Lyell

Volcanic action is essentially paroxysmal; 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. The utmost movements that he allows are a slight quivering of her muscular integuments. ~ Adam Sedgwick

It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.' ~ Charles Lyell

The present is the key to the past ~ Charles Lyell

Man, whose organization is regarded as the highest, departs from the vertebrate archetype; and it is because the study of anatomy is usually commenced from, and often confined to, his structure, that a knowledge of the archetype has been so long hidden from anatomists. ~ Charles Lyell

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change. ~ Charles Lyell

It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea. ~ Charles Lyell

When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld. ~ Charles Lyell

Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it enquires into the causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the surface and external structure of our planet. ~ Charles Lyell

In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it. ~ Charles Lyell

In several sections, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other. ~ Charles Lyell

[My Book] will endeavour to establish the principle[s] of reasoning in ... [geology]; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which ... are neither more nor less than that no causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted, but those now acting; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert. ~ Charles Lyell

Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion. ~ Charles Lyell

The frontispiece of Mr. Lyell's book is enough to throw a Wernerian into fits. ~ George Poulett Scrope

In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation. ~ Charles Lyell

Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for 'independent creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science. ~ Charles Lyell

It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents. ~ Charles Lyell

Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An ~ Charles Lyell