15 Quotes by Jean-Henri Fabre

Permanence of instinct must go with permanence of form...The history of the present must teach us the history of the past.[Referring to studying fossil remains of the weevil, largely unchanged to the present day.]

Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your experience helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind.

History records the names of royal bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

All failed lovers rewrite the script, as if one sexual detail or another might have tipped the balance of pain into destiny, either tragic or miraculous. History record the names of royal bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.

If there is one vegetable which is God-given, it is the haricot bean.

We have within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd.

History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows the names of the king’s bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly.

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.