“Man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything is to be accomplished.”

I saw this vast number of animalcules not all through the semen, but only in the liquid matter adhering to the thicker part.

Examining this water…I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise.

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.

In the year 1657 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water.

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.

How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature!

Just as the supposed number may differ from the true number by fully 100, 150, or even 200 in a flock of 600 sheep, so may I be even more out of my reckoning in the case of these very little animalcules.

How little do we discover in comparison of those things which now are and forever will be hidden from our sight? The whole of which I am fully persuaded no one will ever be able to dive into, and to explain their causes and effects.

Man comes not from an egg but from an animalcule that is found in male sperm.

Man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything is to be accomplished.

I’ve spent more time than many will believe [making microscopic observations], but I’ve done them with joy, and I’ve taken no notice those who have said why take so much trouble and what good is it?

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.

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.

I have divers times endeavoured to see and to know, what parts the Blood consists of; and at length I have observ’d, taking some Blood out of my own hand, that it consists of small round globuls driven through a Crystalline humidity or water.

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.

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.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.

Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah.

We must recognize that this massive economic bloc that’s emerging in North America cannot be accomplished unilaterally. It must be accomplished in partnership with Mexico and Canada.

For me, I find that even though I’ve accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn’t give me a sense of satisfaction.

My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.