“As in Geometry, the most natural way of beginning is from a Mathematical point; so is the same method in Observations and Natural history the most genuine, simple, and instructive.”

The variety of disasters that can occur to us is so enormous that we tend to preserve our sanity by not thinking about most of them.”

Nature is, as it were, a continual circulation. Water is rais’d in Vapour into the Air by one Quality and precipitated down in drops by another, the Rivers run into the Sea, and the Sea again supplies them.

By this the Earth it self, which lyes so near us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter, we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the Whole Universe itself.”

History is supposed to teach us how to deal with the present and future, but it doesn’t do that if we look at it merely as a record of events.”

From the Leaves, and Downs, and Beards of Plants, we come at last to the Seeds; and here indeed seems to be the Cabinet of Nature, wherein are laid up its Jewels.”

By the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.

It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin.”

The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick).

The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the Brain and the Fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of Observations on material and obvious things.

The Wings of all kinds of Insects, are, for the most part, very beautiful Objects, and afford no less pleasing an Object to the mind to speculate upon, then to the eye to behold.”

It is commonly believed that anyone who tabulates numbers is a statistician. This is like believing that anyone who owns a scalpel is a surgeon.

An individual who is afraid to go outdoors for fear of being hit by a meteorite is generally regarded as neurotic.

Statistics are history, and we gather them so that we can learn from history.”

Cut your morning devotions into your personal grooming. You would not go out to work with a dirty face. Why start the day with the face of your soul unwashed?”

Sensible people take precautions against possible disasters, and of course one man’s idea of precaution is another man’s silly worry.

And because also there are many Objects to be met with in the night, which cannot so conveniently be kept perhaps till the day, therefore to procure and cast a sufficient quantity of light on an Object in the night, I thought of, and often used this, Expedient.

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

I am just a beginner. The two films so far are baby steps. If I develop an attitude, I’ll be finished even before I’ve started. Besides, if I started misbehaving, my folks would give me a tight slap.

When all doors are shut and you have nowhere to go, that is when you go within. Every crisis is an opportunity and you are the beginning.

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

I guess it’s true, goodbyes aren’t just endings but beginnings too.

The best “place and time” for a new beginning is “here and now”

We set out with nothing but music as our dream, but we didn’t know where we were going, whether we were going uphill or downhill, or as we took a break after becoming tired, whether around the corner there was a paradise or a pitfall. That’s how we started.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.