British Botanist Quotes

Joseph Dalton Hooker
John Ray
Agnes Arber
Ernest Henry Wilson
William T. Stearn
Benjamin Stillingfleet
Albert Howard

The days are too short even for love; how can there be enough time for quarreling?

A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a good technologist.

A record of research should not resemble a casual pile of quarried stone; it should seem "not built, but born", as Vasari said in praise of a building.

Agnes Arber
Agnes Arber
Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank Important in the plan of Him, who fram'd This scale of beings; holds a rank, which lost Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap Which nature's self would rue.

Benjamin Stillingfleet
Benjamin Stillingfleet
We must never conceal from ourselves that our concepts are creations of the human mind which we impose on the facts of nature, that they are derived from incomplete knowledge, and therefore will never exactly fit the facts, and will require constant revision as knowledge increases.

I am fully conscious that a complete presentation of the regions visited is a task beyond my power. All I can strive to do is convey an illusion-my own illusion

Forgive me for suggesting one caution; as Demosthenes said, "Action, action, action," was the soul of eloquence, so is caution almost the soul of science.

[Luigi Ferrarese] is an enlightened and philanthropic physician of Naples, who has for several years been zealously pursuing the study of Phrenology, and endeavouring to promote its application to those branches of science, morals and legislation, which he perceives it so well calculated to benefit. He has met with much persecution, but he has persevered, and it is with pleasure we perceive that there is one mind at least, in Naples, imbued with the importance of his views

It was to Hofmeister, working as a young man, an amateur and enthusiast, in the early morning hours of summer months, before business, at Leipzig in the years before 1851, that the vision first appeared of a common type of Life-Cycle, running through Mosses and Ferns to Gymnosperms and Flowering Plants, linking the whole series in one scheme of reproduction and life-history.

The prophet is always at the mercy of events; nevertheless, I venture to conclude this book with the forecast that at least half the illnesses of mankind will disappear once our food supplies are raised from fertile soil and consumed in a fresh condition.

Albert Howard
Albert Howard
Whatever may be said for ye Antiquity of the Earth itself and bodies lodged in it ye race of mankind is new.

John Ray
John Ray
I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit.

Gardening is always more or less a warfare against nature. It is true we go over to the 'other side' for a few hints, but we might as well abandon our spades and pitchforks as pretend that nature is everything and art nothing.

The progress of botany, as of other sciences, comes from the interaction of so many factors that undue emphasis on any one can give a very distorted impression of the whole, but certainly among the most important of these for any given period are the prevailing ideas and intellectual attitudes, the assumptions and stimuli of the time, for often upon them depends the extent to which a particular study attracts an unbroken succession of men of industry and originality intent on building a system of knowledge and communicating it successfully to others of like mind.

William T. Stearn
William T. Stearn
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know.

Ernest Henry Wilson
Ernest Henry Wilson
I must own I had always looked on worms as amongst the most helpless and unintelligent members of the creation; and am amazed to find that they have a domestic life and public duties! I shall now respect them, even in our Garden pots; and regard them as something better than food for fishes.

Joseph Dalton Hooker
Joseph Dalton Hooker
[Children] use up the same part of my head as poetry does. To deal with children is a matter of terrific imaginative identification. And the children have to come first. It's no use putting off their evening meal for two months.

The plants which stand next to dwarf trees in importance with the Chinese are certainly chrysanthemums, which they manage extremely well, perhaps better than they do any other plant.