Robert Hooke Quotes

The variety of disasters that can occur to us is so enormous that we tend to preserve our sanity by not thinking about most of them.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Big Ourselves Preserve Probability Sanity Thinking Variety
Nature is, as it were, a continual circulation. Water is rais’d in Vapour into the Air by one Quality and precipitated down in drops by another, the Rivers run into the Sea, and the Sea again supplies them.
ROBERT HOOKE

Circle Nature Quality Recycle River Science Sea Water
By this the Earth it self, which lyes so near us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter, we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the Whole Universe itself.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Creature Diversity Earth Greatness Ourselves Quite Universe
History is supposed to teach us how to deal with the present and future, but it doesn’t do that if we look at it merely as a record of events.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Deal Future History Present Record Teaching
From the Leaves, and Downs, and Beards of Plants, we come at last to the Seeds; and here indeed seems to be the Cabinet of Nature, wherein are laid up its Jewels.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Born Jewel Leave Nature Plant
By the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.
ROBERT HOOKE

Discover Escape Eyes Help See Sight Small Technology Understand
It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Art Beginning Greatness Preserve Principle
The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick).
ROBERT HOOKE

Art Business Design Experiment Practice Society
The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the Brain and the Fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of Observations on material and obvious things.
ROBERT HOOKE

Brain Material Nature Observation Science Sound Time Truth Work
The Wings of all kinds of Insects, are, for the most part, very beautiful Objects, and afford no less pleasing an Object to the mind to speculate upon, then to the eye to behold.”
ROBERT HOOKE

Beautiful Eyes Insect Kind Object Wings
It is commonly believed that anyone who tabulates numbers is a statistician. This is like believing that anyone who owns a scalpel is a surgeon.
ROBERT HOOKE

Believe Career Doctor Job Number Stupidity
An individual who is afraid to go outdoors for fear of being hit by a meteorite is generally regarded as neurotic.
ROBERT HOOKE

Afraid Fear Hit Mad Nature Regard
Statistics are history, and we gather them so that we can learn from history.”
ROBERT HOOKE

History Learning Mathematics Statistics
Cut your morning devotions into your personal grooming. You would not go out to work with a dirty face. Why start the day with the face of your soul unwashed?”
ROBERT HOOKE

Devotion Dirty Face Morning Personal Soul Start Yourself
As in Geometry, the most natural way of beginning is from a Mathematical point; so is the same method in Observations and Natural history the most genuine, simple, and instructive.
ROBERT HOOKE

Beginning Instruction Mathematics Observation Simplicity
Sensible people take precautions against possible disasters, and of course one man’s idea of precaution is another man’s silly worry.
ROBERT HOOKE

Disaster Man People Possible Worry
And because also there are many Objects to be met with in the night, which cannot so conveniently be kept perhaps till the day, therefore to procure and cast a sufficient quantity of light on an Object in the night, I thought of, and often used this, Expedient.
ROBERT HOOKE

Light Myself Night Object Quantity
Not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysicks, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick, or Logick.
ROBERT HOOKE

Divine Grammar Science Space
The footsteps of Nature are to be trac’d, not only in her ordinary course, but when she seems to be put to her shifts, to make many doublings and turnings, and to use some kind of art in endeavouring to avoid our discovery.
ROBERT HOOKE

Art Avoid Discover Kind Nature Ordinary Ourselves

Famous English polymaths