Top Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Quotes

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Biography

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ lwi ləklɛʁ kɔ̃t də byfɔ̃]; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste.

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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Quotes

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.

Experience, Meditation, Mind, Production

Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man.

Exercise, Intellectual, Men, Reunion, Style

Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme.

Business, Extreme, Extremes, Genius, Patience, Simply

There is nothing good in love but the physical part.

Good, Love, Nothing, Part, Physical

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.

Animal, Animals, Equally, Insatiable, Men, Vanity

It appears that all that can be, is. The Creator's hand does not appear to have been opened in order to give existence to a certain determinate number of species, but it seems that it has thrown out all at once a world of relative and non-relative creatures, an infinity of harmonic and contrary combinations and a perpetuity of destructions and replacements. What idea of power is not given us by this spectacle! What feeling of respect for its Author is not inspired in us by this view of the universe!

Combinations, Creatures, Ideas, Inspired, Nature, Science

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.

Animal, Imperceptible, Matter, Nature, Roughest, Science

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.

Marbles, Marls, Ocean, Rocks, Science, Shells

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

Inspirational, Patience, Design, Aptitude, Greater

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.

Ocean, Plato, Quarters, Sea, Suppose

Those who write as they speak, even though they speak well, write badly.

Speak, Though, Wells, Write, Writing

There are several kinds of truths, and it is customary to place in the first order mathematical truths, which are, however, only truths of definition. These definitions rest upon simple, but abstract, suppositions, and all truths in this category are only constructed, but abstract, consequences of these definitions. . . Physical truths, to the contrary, are in no way arbitrary, and do not depend on us.

Category, Constructed, Depend, Order, Simple, Truth

Man thinks, and at once becomes the master of the beings that do not think.

Beings, Man, Masters, Men, Thinking, Thinks

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.

Expression, Same, Thinking, Wit, Writing

To be and to think are one and the same for us.

Same, Science, Think, Thinking

The style is the man himself.

He Man, Man, Men, Style

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.

Different, Example, God, Knowledge, Mean, Origin

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.

Absolute, Absolutes, Nothing, Uniformity, Variety

An Individual, whatever species it might be, is nothing in the Universe. A hundred, a thousand individuals are still nothing. The species are the only creatures of Nature, perpetual creatures, as old and as permanent as it. In order to judge it better, we no longer consider the species as a collection or as a series of similar individuals, but as a whole independent of number, independent of time, a whole always living, always the same, a whole which has been counted as one in the works of creation, and which, as a consequence, makes only a unity in Nature.

Creatures, Independent, Longer, Nature, Science, Whole

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.

Hands, Interesting, Man, Men, Skilful, Works

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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Biography

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