Quotes About Linnaeus

#1. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

Charles Darwin

#2. Linnea ... A plant of Lapland, lowly, insignificant, disregarded, flowering but for a brief space - from Linnaeus who resembles it.

Carl Linnaeus

#3. Weed, are you familiar with the work of Carl Linnaeus? His Systema Naturae describes a classification system for all growing things."
Weed's eyes dart everywhere, probing every corner. "Unless he visited the madhouse, I never met him," he replies.

Maryrose Wood

#4. While we're at it, why don't we add a third emotion to this list: lust. You are probably unaware that Linnaeus lumped the tomato into the same genus as the potato, a food with a reputation for its widespread availability and easy satisfaction of oral needs.

Benson Bruno

#5. Linnaeus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his "comb" and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches" and "gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.

Henry David Thoreau

#6. Linnaeus had it constantly in mind: 'The closer we get to know the creatures around us, the clearer is the understanding we obtain of the chain of nature, and its harmony and system'.

Sten Lindroth

#7. Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds.

Carolus Linnaeus

#8. In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

Carl Linnaeus

#9. When all the thoughts are concerning one thing and the person loses interest in other things, the melancholy begins.

Carl Linnaeus

#10. I live for those who love me,
Whose hearts are kind and true;
For the Heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the task by God assigned me,
For the bright hopes yet to find me,
And the good that I can do.

George Linnaeus Banks

#11. The names of the plants ought to be stable [certa], consequently they should be given to stable genera.

Carl Linnaeus

#12. There are some viviparous flies, which bring forth 2,000 young. These in a little time would fill the air, and like clouds intercept the rays of the sun, unless they were devoured by birds, spiders, and many other animals.

Carl Linnaeus

#13. As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the Creator.

Carl Linnaeus

#14. When the spiritual light is concentrated in the brain, everything else must be sinking in the dark.

Carl Linnaeus

#15. If a tree dies, plant another in its place.

Carl Linnaeus

#16. A herbarium is better than any illustration; every botanist should make one.

Carl Linnaeus

#17. Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.

Carl Linnaeus

#18. No one has been a greater botanist or zoologist. No one has written more books, more correctly, more methodically, from personal experience. No one has more completely changed a whole science and started a new epoch.

Carl Linnaeus

#19. Nature does not proceed by leaps.

Carl Linnaeus

#20. To live by medicine is to live horribly.

Carl Linnaeus

#21. It is the genus that gives the characters, and not the characters that make the genus.

Carl Linnaeus

#22. Fragments of the natural method must be sought with the greatest care. This is the first and last desideratum among botanists.
Nature makes no jumps.
[Natura non facit saltus]
All taxa show relationships on all sides like the countries on a map of the world.

Carl Linnaeus

#23. I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character ... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.

Carl Linnaeus

#24. I live to hail that season by gifted one foretold, when men shall live by reason, and not alone by gold.

George Linnaeus Banks

#25. Natural bodies are divided into three kingdomes of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

Carl Linnaeus

#26. There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures before us today.

Carl Linnaeus

#27. The plant kingdom covers the entire earth, offering our senses great pleasure and the delights of summer.

Carl Linnaeus

#28. Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Carl Linnaeus

#29. If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.

Carl Linnaeus

#30. Stones grow, plants grow, and live, animals grow live and feel.

Carl Linnaeus

#31. A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

Carl Linnaeus

#32. This drink has a magical power. It strengthens the weak, and revives those who have fainted. Those tired after work and physical activity can return their life forces by this drink much sooner than by nourishment ... It works as a diuretic, an appetizer, an antitoxin.

Carl Linnaeus

#33. I live to hold communion With all that is divine, To feel there is a union Twixt Natures heart and mine.

George Linnaeus Banks

#34. Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made ... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes ... For a single genus, a single name.

Carl Linnaeus

#35. It is not God, but people themselves who shorten their lives by not keeping physically fit.

Carl Linnaeus

#36. We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.

Carl Linnaeus

#37. I live for those who love me, for those who know me true; for the heaven that smiles above me and awaits my spirit too. For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance, for the future in the distance, and the good that I can do.

George Linnaeus Banks

#38. A practical botanist will distinguish at the first glance the plant of the different quarters of the globe and yet will be at a loss to tell by what marks he detects them.

Carolus Linnaeus

#39. The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

Carl Linnaeus