17th-century Scientist Quotes

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Cyrano de Bergerac

Stephen Hales

Margaret Cavendish

Johann Joachim Becher

Francesco Maria Grimaldi

Georg Ernst Stahl

The chemists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King.

Johann Joachim Becher

Chymia, or Alchemy and Spagyrism, is the art of resolving compound bodies into their principles and of combining these again.

Georg Ernst Stahl

We do not doubt to assert, that air does not serve for the motion of the lungs, but rather to communicate something to the blood...It is very likely that it is the fine nitrous particles, with which the air abounds, that are communicated to the blood through the lungs.

The most valuable and most precious of all Metals is the most useless in Physick, except when considered as an Antidote to Poverty.

Étienne François Geoffroy

The shape and form of Chymical Vessels is almost infinite...

Christopher Glaser

Chymistry is an Art that teaches how to separate the different substances which are found in Mixt Bodies...

[Fire is] the most potent Agent that Nature hath furnished us withal under Heaven, to perform the Anatomy of Mixt Bodies.

Nicasius le Febure

Light propagates and spreads not only directly, through refraction, and reflection, but also by a fourth mode, diffraction.

Francesco Maria Grimaldi

Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit forth, unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from other writers and speakers.

Margaret Cavendish

He was high enough still to have been hurt by the fall, had it not been for - the large skirts of his Gown, which being swelled by the Wind, gently upheld him till he set Foot on ground.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Here Gentlemen, you have the notes I have kept about my observations on duckweed and little animalcules: in making which I said to myself, How many creatures are still unknown to us, and how little do we yet understand!

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

It is from long experience chiefly that we are to expect the most certain rules of practice, yet it is withal to be remembered, that observations, and to put us upon the most probable means of improving any art, is to get the best insight we can into the nature and properties of those things which we are desirous to cultivate and improve.

I want to note that, because there is the aforementioned difference between mountain and mountain, it will be appropriate, to avoid confusion, to distinguish one [type] from another by different terms; so I shall call the first Primary and the second Secondary.

One will see a layer of smooth stones, popularly called fluitati [diluvium], and over these another layer of smaller pebbles, thirdly sand, and finally earth, and you will see this repeatedly...up to the summit of the Mountain. This clearly shows that the order has been caused by many floods, not just one.

Antonio Vallisneri

Thus we must content our selves for the most part, to find out how Things may be; without pretending to come to a certain knowledge and determination of what they really are.

Jacques Rohault