Buffon Quotes

• 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

  Writing, Science, Years

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Neely Swanson, Larry W. Swanson (2004). “Advice for a Young Investigator”, p.64, MIT Press

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• "Le génie n'est qu'une longue patience", a dit Buffon. Cela est bien incomplet. Le génie, c'est l'impatience dans les idées et la patience dans les faits : une imagination vive et un jugement calme; quelque chose comme un liquide en ébullition dans un vase qui reste toujours froid. "Genius is just enduring patience," said Buffon. This is far from complete. Genius is impatience in ideas and patience with the facts: a lively imagination and a calm judgment, rather like a liquid boiling in a cup that remains cold.

  Leo Errera

  Ideas, Imagination, Genius

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• "Genius is just enduring patience," said Buffon. This is far from complete. Genius is impatience in ideas and patience with the facts: a lively imagination and a calm judgment, rather like a liquid boiling in a cup that remains cold.

  Leo Errera

  Science, Ideas, Imagination

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• 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

  Father, Animal, Bird

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• Buffon is a gentleman thinking only of the ball [after Gianluigi Buffon's strong tackle on Andy Carroll during a friendly with Newcastle

  Claudio Ranieri

  Strong, Thinking, Gentleman

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• Montesquieu had the style of a genius; Buffon, the genius of style.

  Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

  Style, Genius, Montesquieu

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• 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

  Education, Book, Taste

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• 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, Science, Curiosity

  Oliver Goldsmith (1847). “A history of the earth and animated nature, with an intr. view of the animal kingdom tr. from the Fr. of baron Cuvier, notes [and] a life of the author by W. Irving”, p.73

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• Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable error. ... It is wonderful that Buffon who lived so much in the country at his noble seat should have fallen into such a blunder I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.

  James Boswell

  Country, Writing, Science

  James Boswell (1863). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition Never Before Published: the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.54

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• Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Thinking, Race

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.102, Rowman & Littlefield

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