“We must be more and more to each other, my dear wife.' -Charles Darwin to wife Emma upon loss of daughter Annie”

“We shall me much less miserable together.' -Emma Darwin to husband Charles upon grief for loss of daughter Annie”

“You must remember that you are my prime treasure (and always have been).'Emma Darwin to husband Charles”

“Marrying cousins was astoundingly common into the nineteenth century, and nowhere is this better illustrated than with the Darwins and their cousins the Wedgwoods (of pottery fame). Charles married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood, daughter of his beloved Uncle Josiah. Darwin's sister Caroline, meanwhile, married Josiah Wedgwood III, Emma's brother and the Darwin siblings' joint first cousin. Another of Emma's brothers, Henry, married not a Darwin but a first cousin from another branch of his own Wedgwood family, adding another strand to the family's wondrously convoluted genetics. Finally, Charles Langton, who was not related to either family, first married Charlotte Wedgwood, another daughter of Josiah and cousin of Charles, and then upon Charlotte's death married Darwin's sister Emily, thus becoming, it seems, his sister-in-law's sister-in-law's husband and raising the possibility that any children of the union would be their own first cousins.”

“Annie is my wife, and she will remain wi' me as my wife, subject only to my rule. I will suffer no man to dishonor her or lay hand upon her so long as I live.”

“My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?”