Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Quotes

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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
To understand what has happened, and even what will happen we have only to examine what is happening.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
As we can judge only in proportion as we compare, and as all our knowledge turns upon the relations by which one object differs from another, if there existed no brute animals, the nature of the human beings would be still more incomprehensible.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Nature turns upon two steady pivots, unlimited fecundity which she has given to all species; and those innumerable causes of destruction which reduce the product of this fecundity...

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
There is a strange variety in the appearance of individuals, and at the same time a constant resemblance in the whole species.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Petrification is the great means of nature to keep the transitory creatures of all epochs.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
It is the business of the historian to describe not to invent.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
The only good science is the knowledge of facts, and mathematical truths are only truths of definition, and completely arbitrary, quite unlike physical truths.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
One can descend by imperceptible degree from the most perfect creature to the most shapeless matter, from the best-organised animal to the roughest mineral.

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
Let us gather facts in order to get ourselves thinking.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.

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
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
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
In general, the more one augments the number of divisions of the productions of nature, the more one approaches the truth, since in nature only individuals exist, while genera, orders, and classes only exist in our imagination.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
These things [subject matter] are external to the man; style is the man.

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
Of the horse:
The noblest conquest man has ever made.

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
Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon