Philosophical Sayings

It is not God, but people themselves who shorten their lives by not keeping physically fit.

It is the genus that gives the characters, and not the characters that make the genus.

The plant kingdom covers the entire earth, offering our senses great pleasure and the delights of summer.

The stony rocks are not primeval, but daughters of Time.

Natural bodies are divided into three kingdoms of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as he went away, and I grew dizzy. I followed his footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection.

Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Human beings, having, above all creatures, received the power of reason... need to be aware where nature is unaware. Nature reaches its culmination in humans, but human consciousness has not its essence in itself or nature.

There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures bef…

My mind reels when, on this height, I look down on the long ages that have flowed by like waves in the sound and have left traces of the ancient world, traces so nearly obscured that they can only whisper now that everything else has been silenced.

By a botanist I mean one who understands how to observe the genera of Nature. I judge unworthy of the name of botanist the meddlesome person who is indifferent to genera.

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification an…

Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I…

For wealth disappears, the most magnificent houses fall into decay, the most numerous family at some time or another comes to an end: the greatest and the most prosperous kingdoms can be overthrown: but the whole of Nature must be blotted out before …

By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.

Riches don't make a man rich, they only make him busier.

You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.