Jean-Henri Fabre

“History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the king's bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly.”

“Without knowledge of the past, the way forward is a thick fog; without knowledge of the future, the present is missing its point.”

“Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the world would be an uncanny place.”

“Let us try to know ourselves, holding that to be the most important knowledge.”

“The world will never be owned by the lazy.”

“Doubt is the cock's crow that heralds the dawn of discovery.”

“Let us read the great book of nature.”

“Man's highest gift is to be a seeing animal.”

“Nature is a wonderful teacher, a teacher of logic, of measure, of proportion.”

“The first law of the world is that it is.”

“Others dig for worms for bait; I for the sake of science.”

“What a vast field for observation and experiment is the insect world!”

“The man of science, who is not seeking for expression, but for the perfect result, is more limited in his field.”

“The heavens are not humane, nor is any man with a head on his shoulders.”