Quotes & Sayings About Linnaeus

A herbarium is better than any illustration; every botanist should make one. — Carl Linnaeus

I hope you will understand it! Linnaeus says the plants get married and make new plant families, and then those families intermarry and create the species, and then the species intermarry and produce the varieties. You can see why Father would object."
"I suppose," says Weed. "But at least they were all legally wed. — Maryrose Wood

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

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

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

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

It is the genus that gives the characters, and not the characters that make the genus. — Carl Linnaeus

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

Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none ... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

To live by medicine is to live horribly. — Carl Linnaeus

Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence. — Carl Linnaeus

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there had never 'been a greater botanist or zoologist', and that his system of classification was 'the greatest achievement in the realm of science'. Modestly, he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, 'Prince of Botanists'. It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them. — Bill Bryson

The names of the plants ought to be stable [certa], consequently they should be given to stable genera. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

All the species recognized by Botanists came forth from the Almighty Creator's hand, and the number of these is now and always will be exactly the same, while every day new and different florists' species arise from the true species so-called by Botanists, and when they have arisen they finally revert to the original forms. Accordingly to the former have been assigned by Nature fixed limits, beyond which they cannot go: while the latter display without end the infinite sport of Nature. — Carl Linnaeus

I live to hold communion With all that is divine, To feel there is a union Twixt Natures heart and mine. — George Linnaeus Banks

If a tree dies, plant another in its place. — Carl Linnaeus

The plant kingdom covers the entire earth, offering our senses great pleasure and the delights of summer. — Carl Linnaeus

When the spiritual light is concentrated in the brain, everything else must be sinking in the dark. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

Linnaeus's last lesson, of which he himself was unaware, was that professorships kill philosophers. Oh, I'm vain enough to want my burgeoning Flora Japonica to be published one day
as a votive offering to human knowledge
but a seat at Uppsala, or Leiden, or Cambridge, holds no allure. My heart is the East's in this lifetime. This is my third year in Nagasaki, and I have work enough for another three, or six. During the court embassy I can see landscapes no European botanist ever saw. My seminarians are keen young men
with one young woman
and visiting scholars bring me specimens from all over the empire. — David Mitchell

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

We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

Nature does not proceed by leaps. — Carl Linnaeus

When all the thoughts are concerning one thing and the person loses interest in other things, the melancholy begins. — Carl Linnaeus

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

Stones grow, plants grow, and live, animals grow live and feel. — Carl Linnaeus

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

I live to hail that season by gifted one foretold, when men shall live by reason, and not alone by gold. — George Linnaeus Banks

Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. — Carolus Linnaeus

Know thyself! This is the source of all wisdom, said the great thinkers of the past, and the sentence was written in golden letters on the temple of the gods. To know himself, Linnaeus declared to be the essential indisputable distinction of man above all other creatures. I know, indeed, in study nothing more worthy of free and thoughtful man than the study of himself. For if we look for the purpose of our existence, we cannot possibly find it outside ourselves. We are here for our own sake. — Karl Ernst Von Baer

The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science. — Carl Linnaeus

It is not God, but people themselves who shorten their lives by not keeping physically fit. — Carl Linnaeus

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

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

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

If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too. — Carl Linnaeus

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

The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] ... Wordsworth ... Keats ... Chateaubriand ... Senancour. — Matthew Arnold

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

The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species. — Wilfred Trotter