TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index A > Category: Autumn

Autumn Quotes (11 quotes)

An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.
As quoted in David Prerau, Seize the Daylight: The Curious And Contentious Story of Daylight (2006).
Science quotes on:  |  April (9)  |  Ask (420)  |  Back (395)  |  Borrow (31)  |  Daylight Saving Time (10)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Extra (7)  |  Gift (105)  |  Golden (47)  |  Hour (192)  |  Interest (416)  |  Month (91)  |  Morning (98)  |  Night (133)  |  Pay (45)  |  Return (133)  |  Springtime (5)  |  Yawn (2)

Art thou the bird whom Man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin;
The bird that comes about our doors
When autumn winds are sobbing?
From poem, 'The Redbreast and Butterfly', collected in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Complete in One Volume (1828), 72.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Best (467)  |  Bird (163)  |  Breast (9)  |  Door (94)  |  English (35)  |  Little (717)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Ornithology (21)  |  Pious (4)  |  Robin (4)  |  Wind (141)

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Blow (45)  |  Care (203)  |  Climb (39)  |  Drop (77)  |  Energy (373)  |  Flow (89)  |  Freshness (8)  |  Good (906)  |  Leave (138)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Peace (116)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Sunshine (12)  |  Tiding (2)  |  Tree (269)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)

Let Nature do your bottling and your pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick. Men have discovered—or think they have discovered—the salutariness of a few wild things only, and not of all nature. Why, “nature” is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health. Some men think that they are not well in spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it is only because they are not well in them.
(23 Aug 1853). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: V: March 5-November 30, 1853 (1906), 395.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Bottle (17)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  End (603)  |  Exist (458)  |  Health (210)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Moment (260)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pickle (3)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Preserving (18)  |  Resist (15)  |  Salutary (5)  |  Season (47)  |  Sick (83)  |  Spring (140)  |  State (505)  |  Summer (56)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)  |  Winter (46)

Perhaps the greatest joy of flying is the magnificence of the view. … Colors stand out and the shades of the earth, unseen from below, form an endless magic carpet. If anyone really wishes to see the seasons’ changes, he should fly. Autumn turns its most flaming leaves upward and spring hints its coming first for birds and aviators.
In The Fun of It (1932), 46.
Science quotes on:  |  Aviator (2)  |  Flying (74)  |  Joy (117)  |  Magnificence (14)  |  Spring (140)  |  View (496)

That all plants immediately and substantially stem from the element water alone I have learnt from the following experiment. I took an earthern vessel in which I placed two hundred pounds of earth dried in an oven, and watered with rain water. I planted in it a willow tree weighing five pounds. Five years later it had developed a tree weighing one hundred and sixty-nine pounds and about three ounces. Nothing but rain (or distilled water) had been added. The large vessel was placed in earth and covered by an iron lid with a tin-surface that was pierced with many holes. I have not weighed the leaves that came off in the four autumn seasons. Finally I dried the earth in the vessel again and found the same two hundred pounds of it diminished by about two ounces. Hence one hundred and sixty-four pounds of wood, bark and roots had come up from water alone. (1648)
A diligent experiment that was quantitatively correct only as far as it goes. He overlooked the essential role of air and photosynthesis in the growth process.
Complex. atque mist. elem. fig., 30, Opp. pp. 104-5; Aufgang, 148. In Walter Pagel, Joan Baptista Van Helmont (2002) , 53.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bark (19)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Develop (278)  |  Diligent (19)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Essential (210)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Growth (200)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Iron (99)  |  Large (398)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Oven (5)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Photosynthesis (21)  |  Plant (320)  |  Process (439)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Rain (70)  |  Role (86)  |  Root (121)  |  Season (47)  |  Stem (31)  |  Surface (223)  |  Tin (18)  |  Tree (269)  |  Two (936)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Water (503)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Wood (97)  |  Year (963)

The mountain slopes … are covered with dense forests of pines and firs. The lakes are often fringed with beautiful aspens, and when the autumn winds come their golden leaves are carried over the landscape in clouds of resplendent sheen.
In Canyons of the Colorado (1895), 68.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspen (2)  |  Fir (2)  |  Forest (161)  |  Lake (36)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Pine (12)  |  Resplendent (3)  |  Wind (141)

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. ... Great inventions like hay and printing, whatever their immediate social costs may be, result in a permanent expansion of our horizons, a lasting acquisition of new territory for human bodies and minds to cultivate.
Infinite In All Directions (1988, 2004), 135. The book is a revised version of a series of the Gifford Lectures under the title 'In Praise of Diversity', given at Aberdeen, Scotland.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Age (509)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Alive (97)  |  Alp (9)  |  Alps (9)  |  Animal (651)  |  Berlin (10)  |  Call (781)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Climate (102)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Cost (94)  |  Cow (42)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dark Ages (10)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enough (341)  |  Europe (50)  |  Event (222)  |  Exist (458)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Forest (161)  |  Good (906)  |  Grass (49)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Grow (247)  |  Hay (6)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Horse (78)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Body (34)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Invention (400)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Large (398)  |  Life (1870)  |  London (15)  |  Medieval (12)  |  Mediterranean (9)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moscow (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motive (62)  |  New (1273)  |  New York (17)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Other (2233)  |  Oxen (8)  |  Paris (11)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Population (115)  |  Power (771)  |  Printing (25)  |  Profound (105)  |  Result (700)  |  Roman (39)  |  Rome (19)  |  Simple (426)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Social (261)  |  Technology (281)  |  Territory (25)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Urban (12)  |  Usually (176)  |  Western (45)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Winter (46)

We were flying over America and suddenly I saw snow, the first snow we ever saw from orbit. I have never visited America, but I imagined that the arrival of autumn and winter is the same there as in other places, and the process of getting ready for them is the same. And then it struck me that we are all children of our Earth.
As quoted in Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988). Source cited as “submitted by Lev Demin”.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Arrival (15)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Earth (1076)  |  First (1302)  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Never (1089)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Other (2233)  |  Place (192)  |  Process (439)  |  Ready (43)  |  Same (166)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Snow (39)  |  Strike (72)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Visit (27)  |  Winter (46)

When autumn returns with its long anticipated holidays, and preparations are made for a scamper in some distant locality, hammer and notebook will not occupy much room in the portmanteau, and will certainly be found most entertaining company.
In The Story of a Boulder: or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist (1858), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Anticipation (18)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Company (63)  |  Distance (171)  |  Entertaining (9)  |  Entertainment (19)  |  Geology (240)  |  Hammer (26)  |  Holiday (12)  |  Locality (8)  |  Long (778)  |  Most (1728)  |  Notebook (4)  |  Portmanteau (2)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Return (133)  |  Will (2350)

When I arrived in California to join the faculty of the New University which opened in October 1891, it was near the end of the dry season and probably no rain had fallen for three or four months. The bare cracked adobe fields surrounding the new buildings ... offered a decidedly unpromising outlook... A month or two later, however, there was a magical transformation. With the advent of the autumn rains the whole country quickly turned green, and a profusion of liverworts such as I had never seen before appeared on the open ground... I soon realized that right in my own backyard, so to speak, was a wealth of material such as I had never imagined would be my good fortune to encounter. ... Such an invitation to make a comprehensive study of the structure and development of the liverworts could not be resisted; and the next three years were largely devoted to this work which finally resulted in the publication of 'The Mosses and Ferns' in 1895.
In The Structure and Development of Mosses and Ferns (Archegoniatae) (1905, 3rd ed. 1918, rev. 1928). Cited in William C. Steere, Obituary, 'Douglas Houghton Campbell', American Bryological and Lichenological Society, The Bryologist (1953), 131.
Science quotes on:  |  Backyard (4)  |  Bare (33)  |  Book (413)  |  Building (158)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Country (269)  |  Development (441)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Dry (65)  |  Encounter (23)  |  End (603)  |  Fern (10)  |  Field (378)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Good (906)  |  Green (65)  |  Ground (222)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Invitation (12)  |  Material (366)  |  Month (91)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Offer (142)  |  Open (277)  |  Outlook (32)  |  Profusion (3)  |  Publication (102)  |  Rain (70)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Season (47)  |  Soon (187)  |  Speak (240)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  University (130)  |  Unpromising (2)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.