Georges Louis Leclerc 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

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

Actually, what we really need to remember about Galileo is that most of the people who use his name in argument could barely spell it, let alone tell us what actually happened to the man. His case is used over and over again because critics can't think of any other scientists who were mistreated by the Church. And in this instance they're right. There may have been some people in the scientific world who did not enjoy Church support and were even challenged by Catholicism but, sorry to disappoint, there weren't very many of them. The Church has been the handmaiden of science and scientific discovery, and those who refer to Galileo tend to forget that Louis Pasteur, the inventor of pasteurization, was a devout Catholic, as was Alexander Fleming, who gave us penicillin. Or Father Nicolaus Copernicus, who first proposed the theory of the earth revolving around the sun - this was precisely what Galileo stated, but Copernicus taught it as theory and not fact. Or Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, who proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. In the field of acceleration, Fr. Giambattista Riccioli changed the way we understand that particular science; the father of modern Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher, and the Yugoslavian Fr. Roger Boscovich was the founder of modern atomic theory. ~ Michael Coren

I do feel a lot of times like I'm out of my league with my kids in terms of what my responsibility is. ~ Louis C.K.

One moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory. ~ Louis Zamperini

I have always thought that if I had been allowed to read history more constantly, instead of losing my time in studies for which I had no aptness, I might ave made some figure in the world ~ Louis De Rouvroy Saint-Simon

If poetry introduces the strange, it does so by means of the familiar. The poetic is the familiar dissolving into the strange, and ourselves wit it. It never dispossesses us entirely, for the words, the images (once dissolved) are charged with emotions already experienced, attached to objects which link them to the known. ~ Georges Bataille

We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

I was brought up to look upon falling in love as something natural...something that was pleasant and natural and amusing. I've been in love before, casually, the way young Frenchmen are...but in earnest, too, because a Frenchman can't help surrounding a thing like that with sentiment and romance. He can't help it. If it were just...just something shameful and nasty, he couldn't endure it. They don't have affairs in cold blood the way I've heard men talk about such things since I've come here. It makes a difference, Mrs. Pentland, if you look at things in the light they do. I've learned now, and it is a thing which needs learning, the most important thing in all life. The French are right about it. They make a fine, wonderful thing of love. ~ Louis Bromfield

Some people think it's demeaning to victims if you ever say anything out-loud about sexual abuse of children. I don't know if that's true. ~ Louis C.K.

Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men. - George Bernanos ~ Georges Bernanos

To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists. ~ Louis D. Brandeis

I'm like a big old hen. I can't cluck too long about the egg I've just laid because I've got 5 more inside me pushing to get out. ~ Louis L'Amour

Everyone in life faces obstacles. That's what made me who I am. I don't regret to have been bullied because probably if I would not have faced those obstacles I would not have been the man that I am. It make my stronger in a way and it helped me to forge the person that I am right now. ~ Georges St-Pierre

We must not imitate that which we seek to create. ~ Georges Braque

God is the Man, and there's another Man, Stan 'The Man' Musial in St. Louis. ~ Albert Pujols

TO WHOM LIFE IS AN EXPERIENCE TO BE CARRIED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE ...
I have not meant to express my thought but to help you clarify what you yourself think ...
You are not any more different from me than your right leg is from your left, but what joins us is THE SLEEP OF REASON - WHICH PRODUCES MONSTERS.
- Theory of Religion ~ Georges Bataille

What people speak of as adventure is something nobody in his right mind would seek out, and it becomes romantic only when one is safely at home. ~ Louis L'Amour

Having disciples is in the end like having children, only not with love but with self-love preeminent. ~ Louis Kronenberger

The rose is born evil ... but it is pink. ~ Louis Aragon

Everything is funny except your death but other people will laugh. ~ Louis C.K.

When I first got to St. Louis, I saw the arch and I said, 'I want to go to that McDonalds. ~ Gabriel Iglesias

After conscientiously tasting fritters every day for a month Lola had put on two pounds! Her little belt bore witness to the disaster, she found herself obliged to move on to the next notch. She burst into tears. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the state denies us the right to resort to force ... ~ Louis D. Brandeis

The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind. You should never trifle with Nature. ~ Louis Agassiz

With discipline, belief, and the right knowledge, we become the best we can be. ~ Georges St-Pierre

When one reaches this state of harmony between things and one's self, one reaches a state of perfect freedom and peace-which makes everything possible and right. Life becomes perpetual revelation. ~ Georges Braque

It is always brave to say what everyone thinks. ~ Georges Duhamel

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist. ~ Georges Seurat

The opium of the people in the present world is perhaps not so much religion as it is accepted boredom. Such a world is at the mercy, it must be known, of those who provide at least the semblance of an escape from boredom. Human life aspires to the passions, and again encounters its exigencies. ~ Georges Bataille

I'm an avid bridge player. I usually go to the local bridge club three or four times a week. I've always been a game-player, and I think bridge is one of the greatest games ever invented. It's too bad that not many young people play it any more. ~ Louis Sachar

Architecture is the alpha principle of all arts. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

My friend, there is a Hell. It's when a man has a family to support, has his health and is ready to work, and there is no work to do. When he stands with empty hands and sees his children going hungry, his wife without the things to do with. I hope you never have to try it. ~ Louis L'Amour