G.l Buffon Quotes & Sayings

Buffon said unreservedly, "Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme." To those who asked how he achieved fame he replied: "By spending forty years of my life bent over my writing desk." — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

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. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

You score goals as a kid. Then you grow up stupid and become a goalkeeper. — Gianluigi Buffon

The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object - Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes it. It also paints men, it aggrandizes them, it exaggerates them, it creates heroes and gods. History only depicts man, and paints him such as he is. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Buffon found himself threatened with excommunication for expressing it. A practical man, he apologized at once for his thoughtless heresy, then cheerfully repeated the assertions throughout his subsequent writings. — Bill Bryson

Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

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. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

We may affirm of Mr. Buffon, that which has been said of the chemists of old; though he may have failed in attaining his principal aim, of establishing a theory, yet he has brought together such a multitude of facts relative to the history of the earth, and the nature of its fossil productions, that curiosity finds ample compensation, even while it feels the want of conviction. — Oliver Goldsmith

Nature is the system of laws established by the Creator for the existence of things and for the succession of creatures. Nature is not a thing, because this thing would be everything. Nature is not a creature, because this creature would be God. But one can consider it as an immense vital power, which encompasses all, which animates all, and which, subordinated to the power of the first Being, has begun to act only by his order, and still acts only by his concourse or consent ... Time, space and matter are its means, the universe its object, motion and life its goal. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

In recent times Italy have been in a World Cup final every 12 years and I hope to still be there in 2018. — Gianluigi Buffon

To write well is to think well, to feel well, and to render well; it is to possess at once intellect, soul, and taste. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Let us investigate more closely this property common to animal and plant, this power of producing its likeness, this chain of successive existences of individuals, which constitutes the real existence of the species. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.
Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now. — Edgar Allan Poe

One leading French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, famously proposed that climate and other conditions in the New World had led to the inevitable degeneration of its fauna and flora. Buffon's more enthusiastic readers extrapolated from this argument to call into question the virility and intelligence of both America's European settlers and its native inhabitants, the Indians. That sparked a rousing defense of American virtue and vigor from Jefferson, spelled out in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia.20 — Jonathan Lyons

The dog has no ambition, no self-interest, no desire for vengeance, no fear other than that of displeasing. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The discoveries that one can make with the microscope amount to very little, for one sees with the mind's eye and without the microscope the real existence of all these little beings. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Style is the essence of man — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

On the field I defend our colours, love our flag and sing our anthem. I could not be more Italian than I am now. — Gianluigi Buffon

Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

My father ... never required me to study anything, but he knew how to inspire in me a great desire for knowledge. Before learning to read, my greatest pleasure was to listen to passages from Buffon's natural history. I constantly requested him to read me the history of animals and birds ... — Andre-Marie Ampere

There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

There is nothing good in love but the physical part. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

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. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

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

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

Montesquieu had the style of a genius; Buffon, the genius of style. — Friedrich Melchior, Baron Von Grimm

Surley, they couldn't be French?
He tried French anyway, 'Parlay buffon say? — Terry Pratchett

Ignorance produced genera, and science produced, and will continue to produce, proper names; nor of these shall we be afraid to increase the number, whenever we shall have occasion to denote different species. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon