Botany is the art of insulting flowers in Greek and Latin.

In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine,…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although I was four years at the University [of Wisconsin], I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what…

— John Muir

This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as…

— Thomas Sydenham

It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which…

— Gilbert White

“This is a world where things move at their own pace, including a tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly…

— Bill Bryson

“Botany is the name of the science of the vegetable kingdom in general; that is, of plants.”

— Asa Gray

I am interested in 18th century natural philosophy, science, particularly botany, the study of hybridity in plants and animals, which, of course, then allows…

— Natasha Trethewey

If we range through the whole territory of nature, and endeavour to extract from each department the rich stores of knowledge and pleasure they…

— Joseph Paxton

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with…

— Ambrose Bierce

“I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I adopted them and I have done so solely and entirely from an independent study…

— Joseph Dalton Hooker

“Every plant is an individual. Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom…

— Dale Pendell

Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of…

— Carl Linnaeus

I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and…

— John Muir