“It is not always the magnitude of the differences observed between species that must determine specific distinctions, but the constant preservation of those differences in reproduction.”

The form follows the function.

It is not enough to discover and prove a useful truth previously unknown, but that it is necessary also to be able to propagate it and get it recognized.

All knowledge that is not the real product of observation, or of consequences deduced from observation, is entirely groundless and illusory.

Habits form a second nature.

What nature does in the course of long periods we do every day when we suddenly change the environment in which some species of living plant is situated.

All known living bodies are sharply divided into two special kingdoms, based upon the essential differences which distinguish animals from plants, and in spite of what has been said, I am convinced that these two kingdoms do not really merge into one another at any point.

It is not the organs-that is, the character and form of the animal’s bodily parts-that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions in which its ancestors lived that have in the course of time fashioned its bodily form, its organs and qualities.

The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!

You’re basically the sum of all the experiences you’ve ever had, and they’re sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.

What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.

In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction,

If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should I use any other color?

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?