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 Microscope
Quotations
After van Leeuwenhoek’s death on
August 30, 1723, the pastor of the New Church at Delft wrote to the
Royal Society:
Antony van Leeuwenhoek considered that what is true in natural
philosophy can be most fruitfully investigated by the experimental
method, supported by the evidence of the senses; for which reason,
by diligence and tireless labour he made with his own hand certain
most excellent lenses, with the aid of which he discovered many
secrets of Nature, now famous throughout the whole philosophical
World. |
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Since Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of the first simple
microscope in the 17th century, microscopic instruments have
captured the imagination, and comment, of humans. Following are a
few of their quotations for your perusal, thought, and enjoyment. |
Woody Allen
...can the human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe, but you'd
definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces.
Henry Baker
Beware of determining and declaring your opinion suddenly on any object; for
imagination often gets the start of judgment, and makes people believe they see
things, which better observations will convince them could not possibly be seen;
therefore assert nothing till after repeated experiments and examinations in all
lights and in all positions.
When you employ the microscope, shake off all
prejudice, nor harbor any favorite opinions; for, if you do, ‘tis not unlikely
fancy will betray you into error, and make you see what you wish to see.
Lawrence (Yogi) Berra
You can observe a lot by watching.
Josh Billings
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
Sydney Brenner
My Uncle Harry had given me a microscope as a present which allowed me to
continue my personal explorations of the living world.
Lord Chesterfield
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot
receive great ones.
Emily Dickinson
Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen to see;
But microscopes are prudent
In an
emergency.
Kahlil Gibran
The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than
it really is.
Manfred Von Heimendahl
Seeing is believing.
Robert Hooke
...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.
Edwin Hubble
Equipped with our five senses - along with telescopes and microscopes and mass
spectrometers and seismographs and magnetometers and particle accelerators and
detectors sensitive to the entire electromagnetic spectrum - we explore the
universe around us and call the adventure science.
Victor Hugo
Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander
view?
Daniel Mazia
The gifts of microscopes to our understanding of cells and organisms is so
profound that one has to ask: What are the gifts of the microscopist? Here is my
opinion. The gift of the great microscopist is the ability to THINK WITH THE
EYES AND SEE WITH THE BRAIN. Deep revelations into the nature of living things
continue to travel on beams of light.
Lelio Orci & Michael Pepper
As long as there is a hunger for knowledge and a deep desire to uncover the
truth, microscopy will continue to unveil Mother Nature’s deepest and most
beautiful secrets.
Henri Poicare
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it
because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is
beautiful.
It is because simplicity and vastness are both beautiful that we seek
by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in
scrutinizing with a microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a
vastness.…
Adrianus Pijper
(The microscope is) man's noblest, supreme, and most far-reaching tool.
Alexander Pope
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Say
what the use, were finer optics giv'n,
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the
heav'n.
Theodore Roszak
Nature composes some of her loveliest music for the microscope and telescope.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.
Charles Shillaber
"The microscope with its accessories is by far the least understood, the most
inefficiently operated , and the most abused of all laboratory instruments"
James Thurber
"We'll try it," the professor said to me, grimly, ' with every adjustment of the
microscope known to man. As God is my witness, I'll arrange this glass so that
you see cells through it or I'll give up teaching. In twenty-two years of
botany, I -' He cut off abruptly for he was beginning to quiver all over, like
Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to hold onto his temper; his scenes
with me had taken a great deal out of him.
So we tried it with every adjustment
of the microscope known to man. With only one of them did I see anything but
blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity, and that time I saw, to my pleasure
and amazement, a variegated constellation of flecks, specks, and dots. These I
hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came back from an adjoining
desk, a smile on his lips and his eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell
drawing. "What's that?" he demanded, with a hint of a squeal in his voice.
"That's what I saw, " I said. "You didn't, you didn't, you didn't!," he
screamed, losing control of his temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted
into the microscope. His head snapped up. "That's your eye!" he shouted. "You've
fixed the lens so that it reflects! You've drawn your eye!" |
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