Letter to J.D. Hooker, 29 March 1863
In The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 11, 1863; Frederick Burkhardt, Duncan Porter, Sheila Ann Dean, Jonathan R. Topham, Sarah Wilmot, editors; Cambridge University Press, September 1999, page 278
Sometimes paraphrased as “One might as well speculate about the origin of matter.”
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements
“It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it.”
"Outside The Whale" in Granta (1984) http://web.archive.org/web/20110618004653/http://www.granta.com/Magazine/11/Outside-the-Whale/Page-2
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Salman Rushdie 122
British Indian novelist and essayist 1947Related quotes
“Rubbish -- absolute rubbish!”
Storey and Philip
8 1/2 Women
“If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.”
In Gene N Landrum Paranoia & Power: Fear & Fame of Entertainment Icons http://books.google.com/books?id=x3uHJsk1DuwC&pg=PA225, Morgan James Publishing, 1 November 2007, p. 225
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Context: We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, — has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world?
“In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish—that is their strength.”
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (January 6, 1889)
Letters
Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 174)
“You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge.”
Podcast Series 2 Episode 6
On Sayings