“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.”

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.

For my part, I hold it equally impossible for a small shellfish to be produced without generation as for a whale to have its origin from the mud.

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.

What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.

Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.

My experience is that prose usually equals duty – last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.

Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.

That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.