"In rain water, I observed a small red worm and two other kinds of very minute insects; of those of t..." — Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

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.

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.

I now found that the spider cannot fix its thread to anything without imprinting the hind part of its body on the place, by which pressure it emits an incredible number of excessively small threads diverging in every direction from whence we may conclude that as soon as the threads are exposed to the air, they lose their viscosity or gluey quality.

I have lately examined water, in which beaten pepper was steeped, and found two sorts of animals for shape, and each of those sorts to contain greater and smaller kinds: the greater I supposed the elder, the less the younger.