Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Quotes about Science

Time is the great workman of Nature.

Time, Nature, Science

"Natural History, General and Particular".

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

Book, Knowledge, Science

Discours sur le Style (1753)

We can only penetrate the rind of the earth.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Science, Earth, Geology

Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1817). “A Natural History, General and Particular: Containing the History and Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, the Brute Creation, Vegetables, Minerals, Etc. Etc”, p.6

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

Nature, Science, Animal

The greatest marvel is not in the individual. It is in the succession, in the renewal and in the duration of the species that Nature would seem quite inconceivable. This power of producing its likeness that resides in animals and plants, this form of unity, always subsisting and appearing eternal, this procreative virtue which is perpetually expressed without ever being destroyed, is for us a mystery which, it seems, we will never be able to fathom.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Nature, Science, Animal

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.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Nature, Independent, Science

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

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Science, Thinking

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

God, Nature, 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.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Ocean, Science, Rocks

Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1785). “Natural History, General and Particular”, p.13

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!

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Nature, Science, Views

As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Science, Past, Order

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Quotes about Science

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