Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature! ”

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. ”

If we now plainly perceive that the passage of the blood from the arteries into the veins of the tadpole is not performed in any other than those vessels, which are so minute as only to admit the passage of a single globule at a time, we may conclude that the same is performed in like manner in our own bodies and in those of other animals. ”

In treating of the oak, I have considered that the species of it growing in warm climates is superior to that which is produced in cold countries. But we must not imagine this to be the case with all woods; on the contrary, the fir timber grown in cold countries is superior to that produced in warm ones, where its growth is rapid. ”