Jean Henri Fabre Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

Of algebra I had no knowledge whatever. I had heard the name; and the syllables represented to my poor brain the whole whirling legion of the abstruse.

Jean Henri Fabre
Their [the cricket] song is a monotonous and artless, but well suited in its very lack of art to the simple gladness of reviving life. It is the hosanna of the awakening, the sacred alleluia understood by swelling seed and sprouting blade.

Jean Henri Fabre
The Grasshopper tribe has its bursts of gladness; it has moreover the advantage of being able to express them with a sound, the simple satisfaction of the artist.

Jean Henri Fabre
The prehistoric animal is first and foremost an atrocious machine for grabbing, with a stomach for digesting.

Jean Henri Fabre
Others have reproached me with my style.... They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure.

Jean Henri Fabre
I find myself confronted with a subject which is not only highly interesting, but somewhat difficult: not that the subject is obscure; but it presupposes in the reader a certain knowledge of geometry: a strong meat too often neglected.

Jean Henri Fabre
Air, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbonic-acid gas, and carbon monoxide are gases that not even the sharpest eyes can see; and most other gases are of like character in this respect, so that gases as a class are thought of by us as invisible. Now, however, we have a gas that is as subtle and impalpable as the others and yet can be seen very well.

Jean Henri Fabre
From the least to the greatest in the zoological progression, the stomach sways the world; the data supplied by food are chief among all the documents of life.

Jean Henri Fabre
The Sacred beetle never chooses any shape but the sphere, though it necessitates such scrupulous accuracy; she acts as though she knew the laws of evaporation and geometry from beginning to end.

Jean Henri Fabre
I am seized with astonishment, for I understand!

Jean Henri Fabre
The trained mind, alone, more discerning than our retina, sees clearly that which defies the perceptive faculties of the eye.

Jean Henri Fabre
The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem.

Jean Henri Fabre
What explanation shall I give of the wonderful facts which I have set forth? Why, none, absolutely none. I do not explain facts, I relate them.

Jean Henri Fabre
I am not too fond of tangible, indisputable truths; I will not follow you in your sophistical suppositions. I want genuine facts, well-observed, scrupulously-tested facts.

Jean Henri Fabre
You understand, because you succeed in making another understand.

Jean Henri Fabre
The observer must neglect nothing: he never knows what the humblest fact may bring forth.

Jean Henri Fabre
With the exquisite simplicity of its geometry and its ornament, the bird's egg enchants the least cultivated eye.

Jean Henri Fabre
To appoint one's self... an inspector of Spiders' webs, for many years in succession and for long seasons, means joining a not overcrowded profession, I admit. Heaven knows, it does not enable one to put money by! No matter: the meditative mind returns from that school fully satisfied.

Jean Henri Fabre
An error removed is tantamount to a truth gained...

Jean Henri Fabre
Few insects enjoy more fame than the Glow-worm, the curious little animal who celebrates the joy of life by lighting a lantern at its tail-end. We all know it, at least by name, even if we have not seen it roaming through the grass, like a spark fallen from the full moon.

Jean Henri Fabre
Hunting for ideas troubles the brain even more than hunting for the roots of an equation.

Jean Henri Fabre
'Twas a tiny grain at first, an insignificant ball rolling and increasing as it went. From one slope to the other of the theorems, it grew to a heavy mass; and the mass became a mighty projectile which, flung backwards and retracing its course, split the darkness and spread it into one vast sheet of light.

Jean Henri Fabre
Those terrible logarithms, when I happened to open a table of them, made my head swim, with their columns of figures; actual fright, not unmixed with respect, overwhelmed me on the very threshold of that arithmetical cave.

Jean Henri Fabre
True, it [geometry] does not bestow imagination, a delicate flower blossoming none knows how and unable to thrive on every soil; but it arranges what is confused, thins out the dense, calms the tumultuous, filters the muddy and gives lucidity, a superior product to all the tropes of rhetoric.

Jean Henri Fabre
Now is this logarithmic spiral, with its curious properties, merely a conception of the geometers, combining number and extent, at will, so as to imagine a tenebrous abyss wherein to practise their analytical methods afterwards? Is it a mere dream in the night of the intricate, an abstract riddle flung out for our understanding to browse upon?

Jean Henri Fabre
We have within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd.

Jean Henri Fabre
Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Jean Henri Fabre
Do you know the Halicti? Perhaps not. There is no great harm done: it is quite possible to enjoy the few pleasures of life without knowing the Halicti. Nevertheless, when questioned with persistence, those humble creatures with no history can tell us some very singular things; and their acquaintance is not to be disdained if we desire to enlarge our ideas a little upon the bewildering rabble of this world. Since we have nothing better to do, let us look into these Halicti. They are worth the trouble.

Jean Henri Fabre
The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.

Jean Henri Fabre
The best thing is to say good-bye, not without a certain regret on my part. One of these days. I will take you and scatter you in your territory, the rock-strewn slope where the sun is so hot.... There you will learn the hard struggle for life better than you would with me.

Jean Henri Fabre