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The more anyone knows about the two kingdoms, animate and vegetating, the less he perceives any boundary between them, until finally he comes to deny the existence of that boundary. Holding the passport of investigation which is stamped with the one great seal of life itself, a biologist travels unchallenged from one realm to the other.

— Donald C. Peattie Flowering Earth (1939)

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More quotes by Donald C. Peattie

When a naturalist is thoroughly comfortable and settled, it is time to uproot him.

Flowering Earth (1939)

The fungi are the underworld of plant life, that lives clandestinely, by its unconscious wits, taking to cover in unfavorable times, rioting at another.

Flowering Earth (1939)

Species is but the ideal form; within this idea, within each species, is a diversity of individuality to make the stars look monotonous.

Flowering Earth (1939)

As plantsmen we are interested in the moment when the first plant began. For there was raised the flag of life.

Flowering Earth (1939)

Futile for science to try to discover what the forces of Nature are; it can only discover how they operate.

An Almanac for Moderns (1935)

All Donald C. Peattie quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Donald C. Peattie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.