Whether man is disposed to yield to nature or to oppose her, he cannot do without a correct understanding of her language
Interpretation
Understanding nature's language is essential for coexistence and respect towards it.
This quote emphasizes the importance of comprehending the natural world's laws and principles, suggesting that whether one chooses to embrace or challenge nature, a deep understanding of its 'language' is crucial. Jean Rostand highlights that our relationship with nature is complex and requires learning and adaptation to ensure harmony and sustainability.
In practice
During a speech on environmental conservation, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of understanding natural ecosystems.
If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.
I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he is about to commit a sin or offence. It is childβs play for God. Why did He not kill war lords? Why did He not remove the fury of war from their minds? In this way God could have saved humanity from great calamity and horror.
If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
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