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 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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I observed certain animalcules, within whole bodies I saw so quick a motion as to exceed belief; they were about the size of a large grain of sand, and their bodies being transparent, that the internal motion could plainly be seen.
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 the year 1657 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
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.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
Man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything is to be accomplished.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
The 4th sort of creatures… which moved through the 3 former sorts, were incredibly small, and so small in my eye that I judged, that if 100 of them lay [stretched out] one by another, they would not equal the length of a grain of course Sand; and according to this estimate.
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 -
[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 -
Ten hundred thousand of them could not equal the dimensions of a grain of such course Sand.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
Whenever I found something remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people be informed thereof.
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 -
How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature!
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
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.
ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK -
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.
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