Erasmus Darwin Quotes

English - Scientist December 12, 1731 - April 18, 1802

https://todayinsci.com/D/Darwin_Erasmus/DarwinErasmus-Quotations.htm

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/73020.Erasmus_Darwin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin

Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist,[1] inventor and poet.

His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life.

He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers.

He turned down an invitation of George III's to become a physician to the King.

By firm immutable immortal laws Impress’d on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,

Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife

Organic forms, and kindled into life;

How Love and Sympathy with potent charm

Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;

Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,

And bind Society in golden chains.

— Erasmus Darwin

From the sexual, or amatorial, generation of plants new varieties, or improvements, are frequently obtained; as many of the young plants from seeds are dissimilar to the parent, and some of them superior to the parent in the qualities we wish to possess... Sexual reproduction is the chef d'oeuvre, the master-piece of nature.

— Erasmus Darwin

Hence dusky Iron sleeps in dark abodes,

And ferny foliage nestles in the nodes;

Till with wide lungs the panting bellows blow,

And waked by fire the glittering torrents flow;

Quick whirls the wheel, the ponderous hammer falls,

Loud anvils ring amid the trembling walls,

Strokes follow strokes, the sparkling ingot shines,

Flows the red slag, the lengthening bar refines;

Cold waves, immersed, the glowing mass congeal,

And turn to adamant the hissing Steel.

— Erasmus Darwin

Hence when a person is in great pain, the cause of which he cannot remove, he sets his teeth firmly together, or bites some substance between them with great vehemence, as another mode of violent exertion to produce a temporary relief. Thus we have the proverb where no help can be has in pain, 'to grin and abide;' and the tortures of hell are said to be attended with 'gnashing of teeth.'Describing a suggestion of the origin of the grin in the present form of a proverb, 'to grin and bear it.'

— Erasmus Darwin

I much condole with you on your late loss... pains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;-—Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again.

— Erasmus Darwin

Man is an eating animal, a drinking animal, and a sleeping animal, and one placed in a material world, which alone furnishes all the human animal can desire. He is gifted besides with knowing faculties, practically to explore and to apply the resources of this world to his use. These are realities. All else is nothing; conscience and sentiment are mere figments of the imagination. Man has but five gates of knowledge, the five senses; he can know nothing but through them; all else is a vain fancy, and as for the being of a God, the existence of a soul, or a world to come, who can know anything about them? Depend upon it, my dear madam, these are only the bugbears by which men of sense govern fools.

— Erasmus Darwin

Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand,

And give new wonders to the Chemist’s hand;

On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire,

Or fix in sulphur all its solid fire;

With boundless spring elastic airs unfold,

Or fill the fine vacuities of gold

With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal,

By fierce collision from the flint and steel. …

— Erasmus Darwin

Opium is the only drug to' be rely'd on—all the boasted nostrums only take up time, and as the disease [is] often of short duration, or of small quantity, they have gain'd credit which they do not deserve.

— Erasmus Darwin

Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new animal, but it is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent; since a part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent; and therefore in strict language it cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production; and therefore it may retain some of the habits of the parent-system. (1794)

— Erasmus Darwin

Papyra, throned upon the banks of Nile,

Spread her smooth leaf, and waved her silver style.

The storied pyramid, the laurel’d bust,

The trophy’d arch had crumbled into dust;

The sacred symbol, and the epic song (Unknown the character, forgot the tongue,)

With each unconquer’d chief, or sainted maid,

Sunk undistinguish’d in Oblivion’s shade.

Sad o’er the scatter’d ruins Genius sigh’d,

And infant Arts but learn’d to lisp, and died.

Till to astonish’d realms Papyra taught To paint in mystic colours Sound and Thought,

With Wisdom’s voice to print the page sublime,

And mark in adamant the steps of Time.

— Erasmus Darwin

So erst the Sage [Pythagoras] with scientific truth

In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth;

With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass

From life to life, a transmigrating mass;

How the same organs, which to-day compose

The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose,

May with to-morrow's sun new forms compile,

Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile.

Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan,

That man should ever be the friend of man;

Should eye with tenderness all living forms,

His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.

— Erasmus Darwin

Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!

— Erasmus Darwin

We hence acquire this sublime and interesting idea; that all the calcareous mountains in the world, and all the strata of clay, coal, marl, sand, and iron, which are incumbent on them, are MONUMENTS OF THE PAST FELICITY OF ORGANIZED NATURE!

— Erasmus Darwin