“This particle I concluded to be the heart.”

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.]

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.

We’re all nothing but unified arrangements of atoms and particles, drifting around.

The main ingredient of the first quantum revolution, wave-particle duality, has led to inventions such as the transistor and the laser that are at the root of the information society.

I am a particle physicist, which is the nearest branch to nuclear physics. So in that sense I was the sort of right connection with the subject of nuclear energy and so on.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.

She wants to live in trust; knowing that the right particles are colliding, in the most divinely timed timing.

One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.

Surely I could never be certain of how many stars I’ve counted in the sky or of how such tiny particles can be build into wild-eyed stories like Aquarius and Cassiopeia. I could read you as I would the constellations and never tire.

You touch me and a thousand different particles come alive beneath my skin.