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Quote by Erasmus Darwin

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Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin was an English physician, poet, and scientist, known for his contributions to the field of medicine and his work in evolutionary theory. He was the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist. more

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“The worth of a new idea is invariably determined, not by the degree of its intuitiveness-which incidentally, is to a major extent a matter of experience and habit-but by the scope and accuracy of the individual laws to the discovery of which it eventually leads.”

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“As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.”

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“Nature prefers the more probable states to the less probable because in nature processes take place in the direction of greater probability. Heat goes from a body at higher temperature to a body at lower temperature because the state of equal temperature distribution is more probable than a state of unequal temperature distribution.”

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Book:Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics Delivered at Columbia University in 1909
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“Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!”

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Book:Phytologia; Or, The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening: With the Theory of Draining Morasses, and with an Improved Construction of the Drill Plough
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“The colours of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the colour of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are coloured like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-coloured bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them.”

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Book:The Botanic Garden: A Poem, in Two Parts: Part I. Containing The Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants
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“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,-a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.‎”

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“Go to your confessor; open your heart to him; display to him all the recesses of your soul; take the advice that he will give you with the utmost humility and simplicity. For God, Who has an infinite love for obedience, frequently renders profitable the counsels we take from others, but especially from those who are the guides of our souls.”

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Author:Saint Francis de Sales
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