Louis Agassiz Quotes

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink.

The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.

The happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes.

A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

Science is to be much commended for the ingenuity, the patience, and the persistency it displays in the invention of instruments wherewith to ferret out the secrets of nature.

Science is about unravelling nature.

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do.

If you're interested in something, do some more research and don't be afraid to ask questions. At the very worst you're going to know more than you did at the start of the day.

I ransack public libraries & find them full of sunk treasure.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

When books are opened, we discover that we have wings

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of yourminds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Many years ago, when I was just about as complete a failure as one can become, I began to spend a good deal of time in libraries, looking for some answers. I found all the answers I needed in that golden vein of ore that every library has.

The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.

Nature yields her most profound secrets to the person who is determined to uncover them.

To a child, and to an adult, too, what you discover by yourself, or what you think you discover by yourself, is what stays.