Carl Linnaeus

Natural bodies are divided into three kingdoms of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

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.

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

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

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

¿Qué tiene de extraño que yo no vea a Dios si no puedo ver siquiera al Yo que vive en mí?

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.

Nature does not make any leaps. (Natura non facit saltus)

I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as he went away, and I grew dizzy. I followed his footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection.

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.

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.

Human beings, having, above all creatures, received the power of reason... need to be aware where nature is unaware. Nature reaches its culmination in humans, but human consciousness has not its essence in itself or nature.

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.

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.

These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

My mind reels when, on this height, I look down on the long ages that have flowed by like waves in the sound and have left traces of the ancient world, traces so nearly obscured that they can only whisper now that everything else has been silenced.

For wealth disappears, the most magnificent houses fall into decay, the most numerous family at some time or another comes to an end: the greatest and the most prosperous kingdoms can be overthrown: but the whole of Nature must be blotted out before the race of plants passes away, and he is forgotten who in Botany held up the torch.

Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.

By a botanist I mean one who understands how to observe the genera of Nature. I judge unworthy of the name of botanist the meddlesome person who is indifferent to genera.

The Earth's Creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone.