John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Others have taken a more hopeful view, but in attempting to reconstruct the story of the past, they have too often allowed imagination to usurp the place of research, and have written in the spirit of the novelist, rather than in that of the philosopher.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Life is a great gift, and as we reach years of discretion, most of us naturally ask ourselves what should be the main object of our existence.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Time is a trust, and for every minute of it you will have to account.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
When important decisions have to be taken, the natural anxiety to come to a right decision will often keep you awake. Nothing, however, is more conducive to healthful sleep than plenty of open air.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
If we could imagine a day prolonged for a lifetime, or nearly so, and that sunrise and sunset were rare events which happened but a few times to each of us, we should certainly be entranced by the beauty of the morning and evening tints.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Science, our Fairy Godmother, will, unless we perversely reject her help, and refuse her gifts, so richly endow us, that fewer hours of labour will serve to supply us with the material necessaries of life, leaving us more time to ourselves, more leisure to enjoy all that makes life best worth living.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
It always seems to be raining harder than it really is when you look at the weather through the window.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Lovely as Flowers are, Leaves add even more to the Beauty of Nature.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
False pleasures come from without and are imperfect: happiness is internal and our own.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise, if some day when I am alone in the woods one of the trees were to speak to me.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
The realities of Science have proved far more varied and surprising than the dreams of fiction.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
If Man would but treat other animals with kindness, so that they might approach us without fear, and we might have the constant pleasure of watching their winning ways. Their origin and history, structure and habits, senses and intelligence, offer an endless field of interest and wonder.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Many of the greatest men have owed their success to industry rather than to cleverness.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
There are temptations which strong exercise best enables us to resist

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Comets may almost be regarded as the ghosts of heavenly bodies.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Lakes in fine scenery are like silver ornaments on a beautiful dress, like liquid gems in a rich setting, or bright eyes in a lovely face.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
How little our libraries cost us as compared with our liquor cellars.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Happy indeed is the naturalist: to him the seasons come round like old friends; to him the birds sing: as he walks along, the flowers stretch out from the hedges, or look up from the ground, and as each year fades away, he looks back on a fresh store of happy memories.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
It is as difficult for a river as for a man to get out of a groove.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Though it is a great mistake to make friends of the wicked and foolish, it is unwise to make enemies of them, for they are very numerous.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
There is no species of animal or plant which would not well repay, I will not say merely the study of a day, but even the devotion of a lifetime.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest, for he has not earned it.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Art trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury