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Life is a phenomenon, sui generis, a primal fact in its own right, like energy. Cut flesh or wood how you like, hack at them in a baffled fury — you cannot find life itself, you can only see what it built out of the lifeless dust.

— Donald C. Peattie An Almanac for Moderns (1935)

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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)

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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.