Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

I must confess... I don't know any tongue but the Nether-Dutch.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

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.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

No one can pretend to say that a fish is ever killed by heat, for many kinds of fish, in the middle of summer, and in the burning heat of the sun, do either play, as it were, on the surface of the water, or hide themselves under the leaves, weeds, or other substances at the bottom.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

We will admit that, out of the mud or sand which is found on the seashore or the beds of our rivers, at low water, shellfish or testaceous animals come forth, but it does not from thence by any means follow that they are produced without any regular course of generation.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

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.