Quote
By Charles Darwin
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally 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.
- Source
- On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, first edition, 1859 · Chapter XIV, Conclusion, p. 490
- Read at
- Internet Archive (scan of the 1859 first edition, London: John Murray)
Share this quote
About this quote
The closing sentence of On the Origin of Species, first edition (London: John Murray, 1859). The phrase "by the Creator" after "breathed" was added in the second edition of 1860 and is not in the first, which is the text quoted here.