I’ve never taught one, because if I taught one, I’d have to teach others. I would give myself over to a slavery, whereas I want to stay a free man.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEKAnd I imagine, that [ten hundred thousand] of these little Creatures do not equal an ordinary grain of Sand in bigness: And comparing them with a Cheese-mite (which may be seen to move with the naked eye)
More Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Quotes
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The 31th of May, I perceived in the same water more of those Animals, as also some that were somewhat bigger.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
[M]y work, which I’ve done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
Among other things, I saw in the body of one of these animalcules a bright and round corpuscle, placed near the head, and in which a very wonderful swift motion was to be seen, consisting of an alternate extension and contraction.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
In it, that sometimes more than a thousand were moving about in an amount of material the size of a grain of sand…
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
Man comes not from an egg but from an animalcule that is found in male sperm.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
For, the circumference of one of these little Animals in water, is not so big as the thickness of a hair in a Cheese-mite.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
The whole circumference of each of these streaks was about the thickness of a hair of one’s head. … all consisted of very small green globules joined together: and there were very many small green globules as well. [The earliest recorded observation of the common green alga Spyrogyra.]
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
Examining this water…I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas, but I’ll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reasons which I can grasp.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
I make the proportion of one of these small Water-creatures to a Cheese-mite, to be like that of a Bee to a Horse:
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
In rain water, I observed a small red worm and two other kinds of very minute insects; of those of the larger size, I judged that 30,000 together would not equal a coarse sand.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
I have oft-times been besought, by divers gentlemen, to set down on paper what I have beheld through my newly invented microscopia, but I have generally declined.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
I have often endeavoured to view the circulation of the blood in terrestrial animals, but without success, by reason that no parts of their bodies were sufficiently transparent.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
For my part, I would say that the male sperm and seeds of plants have been penetrated so far that there is nothing further to discover in this great secret, but I could err in my opinion.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
I saw this vast number of animalcules not all through the semen, but only in the liquid matter adhering to the thicker part.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK