Philosophical Sayings
241 sayings found from the Early Modern era
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.
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…
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…
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…
These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.
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.
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 …
Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.
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.
The Earth's Creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone.
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.
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 stony rocks are not primeval, but daughters of Time.
The heart is the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well be designated the heart of the world; for it is the heart by whose virtue and pulse the blood is moved, perfected, made apt to nourish, and is preser…
The animal's heart is the basis of its life, its chief member, the sun of its microcosm; on the heart all its activity depends, from the heart all its liveliness and strength arise. Equally is the king the basis of his kingdoms, the sun of his microc…
There is no science which does not spring from pre-existing knowledge, and no certain and definite idea which has not derived its origin from the senses.