Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development.

The observer listens to nature: the experimenter questions and forces her to reveal herself.

Nurse, it was I who discovered that leeches have red blood.[]On his deathbed when the nurse came to apply leeches

Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the earth must have had a more decisive effect on the terrestrial quadrupeds than on the marine animals.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a long time they were covered by waters which did not sustain any life.

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

Your inner positive self demands that you keep surprising yourself with extraordinary achievements.

To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you... and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.

And what is enlightenment anyway but delusions we can live with?

You, Stan, are covered with dirt and leaves.''''I just applied for a job as a tree, '' I said. It made so little sense, he didn't even bother responding.

Blessed are those who give without remembering and take without forgetting.

When it comes to global warming, coal is the gorilla in the room.

I guess the tone of jokes is often, at best, irreverent, but it always comes from a place of deep love.

In 1947 I married Rowena Palmer, and we have two daughters, Alison and Claire, and a son, John.

There's nothing like the knowledge of being hanged in the morning to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

While the worriers are worrying, the planners are planning and the accountants are figuring out why we can't afford it, I'm busy getting started.