William Harvey

“Doctrine is a wonderful thing, but it is not the most certain thing in the world.”

“I profess to learn and teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.”

“The blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion.”

“The heart is the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his sphere may be called the heart of the world.”

“The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds.”

“I have often wondered and even laughed at those who fancied that everything had been so consummately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen or some other mighty name, that nothing could by any possibility be added to their knowledge.”

“Man comes into the world naked and unarmed, as if nature had destined him for a social creature, and ordained that he should live under equitable laws and in peace.”

“There is a lust in man no charm can tame: Of loudly publishing his neighbor's shame: On eagles' wings immortal scandals fly, while virtuous actions are but born and die.”

“All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains to be known.”

“Nature is a volume of which God is the author.”