De Buffon Quotes

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}

He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.

Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.

He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable. ~ Ernst W. Mayr

There is nothing good in love but the physical part. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

I am convinced, by repeated observation, that marbles, lime-stones, chalks, marls, clays, sand, and almost all terrestrial substances, wherever situated, are full of shells and other spoils of the ocean. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

To be and to think are one and the same for us. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Let us investigate more closely this property common to animal and plant, this power of producing its likeness, this chain of successive existences of individuals, which constitutes the real existence of the species. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race. ~ Thomas Jefferson

All the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity ... that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The style is the man himself ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

For the little that one has reflected on the origin of our knowledge, it is easy to perceive that we can acquire it only by means of comparison. That which is absolutely incomparable is wholly incomprehensible. God is the only example that we could give here. He cannot be comprehended, because he cannot be compared. But all which is susceptible of comparison, everything that we can perceive by different aspects, all that we can consider relatively, can always be judged according to our knowledge. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

One leading French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, famously proposed that climate and other conditions in the New World had led to the inevitable degeneration of its fauna and flora. Buffon's more enthusiastic readers extrapolated from this argument to call into question the virility and intelligence of both America's European settlers and its native inhabitants, the Indians. That sparked a rousing defense of American virtue and vigor from Jefferson, spelled out in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia.20 ~ Jonathan Lyons

Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

To write well is to think well, to feel well, and to render well; it is to possess at once intellect, soul, and taste. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Nature is the system of laws established by the Creator for the existence of things and for the succession of creatures. Nature is not a thing, because this thing would be everything. Nature is not a creature, because this creature would be God. But one can consider it as an immense vital power, which encompasses all, which animates all, and which, subordinated to the power of the first Being, has begun to act only by his order, and still acts only by his concourse or consent ... Time, space and matter are its means, the universe its object, motion and life its goal. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Let us suppose, that the Old and New worlds were formerly but one continent, and that, by a violent earthquake, the ancient Atalantis [sic] of Plato was sunk ... The sea would necessarily rush in from all quarters, and form what is now called the Atlantic ocean. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object - Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes it. It also paints men, it aggrandizes them, it exaggerates them, it creates heroes and gods. History only depicts man, and paints him such as he is. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Although the works of the Creator may be in themselves all equally perfect, the animal is, as I see it, the most complete work of nature, and man is her masterpiece. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Only silence is great; all else is weakness. ~ Alfred De Vigny

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done. ~ Michel De Montaigne

People may ask "why do you laugh at simple things?" Tell them that why don't you? Life is too short to make it so miserable. ~ Kenneth De Guzman

Predictably, the national broadcaster - a viper's nest of socialists, tree-huggers and ugly, barren females - had seized on the survey, exhuming one of its bleeding-heart ideologues to moan about funding cuts to education. ~ Michelle De Kretser

We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable. ~ Michel De Montaigne

It is a great thing," says the author of the Imitation, forestalling St. John of the Cross, "a very great thing to be able to do without all solace, both human and divine, and to be willing to bear this exile of the heart for the honor of God, and in nothing seek self, and not to have regard to one's own merit. What great thing is it to be cheerful and devout when grace comes to thee? This is an hour desirable to all."3 This purgation of the sense comes ~ San Juan De La Cruz

All we are is in the soul. ~ Honore De Balzac

I'm a sick woman, a madwoman, a ball-breaker, a man-eater; I don't consume men gracefully with my fire-like red hair or my poisoned kiss; I crack their joints with these filthy ghoul's claws and standing on one foot like a de-clawed cat, rake at your feeble efforts to save yourselves with my taloned hinder feet: my matted hair, my filthy skin, my big fat plaques of green bloody teeth. I don't think my body would sell anything. I don't think I'd be good to look at. O of all diseases self-hate is the worst and I don't mean for the one who suffers it! ~ Joanna Russ

Religions are the cradles of despotism. ~ Marquis De Sade

We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are. ~ Honore De Balzac

The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me ... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The truth was that, with the Duchess de Luxembourg, with Mme de Morienval, Mme de Saint-Euverte and any number of others, the features that made their faces distinctive were a big red nose next to a hare-lip, or two wrinkled cheeks and a faint moustache. Such features cast their own spell well enough since, as a merely conventional form of handwriting, they enabled one to read a famous and impressive name; but ultimately they also gave rise to the notion that ugliness was somehow aristocratic, that it was a matter of indifference that the face of a grand lady should be beautiful, provided that it was distinguished. ~ Marcel Proust

Memory is what makes us young or old. ~ Alfred De Musset

not that man presume to look for the mercy of God who offends His holy Mother. ~ St. Louis De Montfort

Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time. ~ Alain De Botton

I discovered early that the hardest thing to overcome is not a physical disability but the mental condition which it induces. The world, I found, has a way of taking a man pretty much at his own rating. If he permits his loss to make him embarrassed and apologetic, he will draw embarrassment from others. But if he gains his own respect, the respect of those around him comes easily. ~ Alexander P. De Seversky

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. ~ Honore De Balzac

And the secret of human life, the universal secret, the root secret from which all other secrets spring, is the longing for more life, the furious and insatiable desire to be everything else without ever ceasing to be ourselves, to take possession of the entire universe without letting the universe take possession of us and absorb us; it is the desire to be someone else without ceasing to be myself, and continue being myself at the same time I am someone else ... ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Roque ... lined his men up and had them produce all the clothing, jewels, money, and other objects that they had stolen since the last time they had divided the spoils. Having made a hasty appraisal and reduced to terms of money those items that could not be divided, he split the whole into shares with such equity and exactitude that in not a single instance did he go beyond or fall short of a strict distributive justice. They were all well satisfied with the payment received, indeed they were quite well pleased; and Roque then turned to Don Quixote. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart! ~ Marquis De Sade

Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular! ~ Honore De Balzac

Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God's sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

Trying is failing with dignity. ~ Ton De Graaf

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living. ~ Nancy Mitford

I have found a very great number of exceedingly beautiful theorems. ~ Pierre De Fermat

But is shame really the most useful tool to be employed in the reformation of mankind? Do people grow better through being belittled? Does fear educate? ~ Alain De Botton

It is a joyous thing, war. You love your comrade so much in war. When you see that your quarrel is just, and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body. And then your are prepared to go and live or die with him, and for love not to abandon him. And out of that, there arises such a delectation, that he who has not experienced it is not fit to say what delight is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all, for he feels so strengthened, so elated, that he does not know where he is. Truly he is afraid of nothing. ~ Jean De Bevil

Many economists are great believers in the idea that everything in nature is competitive and that we should set up a society which is competitive to reflect that. Anyone who cannot keep up, well, too bad. ~ Frans De Waal

It does not matter the circumstances, trials, or challenges that might surround us; an understanding of the doctrine of Christ and His Atonement will be the source of our strength and peace-yes, brothers and sisters, that internal tranquility that is born of the Spirit and which the Lord gives to His faithful Saints. ~ Benjamin De Hoyos

How does one de-friend "Goodreads Recommends" and "Based On Your Reading Preferences, You Might Enjoy," I wonder? ~ Good Readers

The world exploded when he passed by. Ashes were all he left behind. ~ Timothee De Fombelle

So it takes years to make a solid company. ~ Ninette De Valois

As hard as it is to date someone with nineteenth-century manners-seriously, it's getting to a point where I spend so much time swimming laps in the campus pool to work off my sexual frustration, my highlights are becoming brassy-I still feel a thrill every time Jesse calls me Susannah. He thinks the name everyone else calls me-Suze-is too short and ugly for someone of my strength and beauty. ~ Meg Cabot

A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just