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For a large number of problems, there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler forms. But they were believed not to blend.

There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive.

People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.

When people are thinking, we are quite inventive animals.

But it was soon ascertained that this quaternary matter of the animal body was chemically the same in the plant, was elaborated there, and only appropriated by the animal.

If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose.

I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment.