Robert Boyle quotes:

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  • The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of man's redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.

  • Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due con-templation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty.

  • From a knowledge of His work, we shall know Him.

  • It is not strange to me that persons of the fair sex should like, in all things about them, the handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked.

  • And I might add the confidence with which distracted persons do oftentimes, when they are awake, think, they see black fiends in places, where there is no black object in sight without them.

  • Female beauties are as fickle in their faces as in their minds; though casualties should spare them, age brings in a necessity of decay.

  • Epicurus... supposes not only all mixt bodies, but all others to be produced by the various and casual occursions of atoms, moving themselves to and fro by an internal principle in the immense or rather infinite vacuum.

  • ... even when we find not what we seek, we find something as well worth seeking as what we missed.

  • God may rationally be supposed to have framed so great and admirable an automaton as the world for special ends and purposes.

  • If the omniscient author of nature knew that the study of his works tends to make men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would not have given them so many invitations to study and contemplate Nature.

  • God [is] the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.

  • He that said it was not good for man to be alone, placed the celibate amongst the inferior states of perfection.

  • The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of mans redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.

  • The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration.

  • Acid Salts have the Power of Destroying the Blewness of the Infusion of our Wood [lignum nephreticum], and those Liquors indiscriminatly that abound with Sulphurous Salts, (under which I comprehend the Urinous and Volatile Salts of Animal Substances, and the Alcalisate or fixed Salts that are made by Incineration) have the virtue of Restoring it.

  • And let me adde, that he that throughly understands the nature of Ferments and Fermentations, shall probably be much better able than he that Ignores them, to give a fair account of divers Phænomena of severall diseases (as well Feavers and others) which will perhaps be never throughly understood, without an insight into the doctrine of Fermentation.

  • And when with excellent Microscopes I discern in otherwise invisible Objects the Inimitable Subtlety of Nature's Curious Workmanship; And when, in a word, by the help of Anatomicall Knives, and the light of Chymicall Furnaces, I study the Book of Nature, and consult the Glosses of Aristotle, Epicurus, Paracelsus, Harvey, Helmont, and other learn'd Expositors of that instructive Volumne; I find my self oftentimes reduc'd to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are thy works, O Lord? In wisdom hast thou made them all.

  • And, to prevent mistakes, I must advertize you, that I now mean by elements, as those chymists that speak plainest do by their principles, certain primitive or simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies; which not being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the ingredients of which all those called perfectly mixt bodies are immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately resolved: now whether there be any such body to be constantly met with in all, and each, of those that are said to be elemented bodies, is the thing I now question.

  • As the moon, though darkened with spots, gives us a much greater light than the stars that sewn all-luminous, so do the Scriptures afford more light than the brightest human authors. In them the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

  • As the sun is best seen at his rising and setting, so men's native dispositions are clearest seen when they are children, and when they are dying.

  • But the World being once fram'd, and the course of Nature establish'd, the Naturalist, (except in some few cases, where God, or Incorporeal Agents interpose), has recourse to the first Cause but for its general and ordinary Support and Influence, whereby it preserves Matter and Motion from Annihilation or Desition; and in explicating particular phenomena, considers onely the Size, Shape, Motion, (or want of it) Texture, and the resulting Qualities and Attributes of the small particles of Matter.

  • Darkness, that here surrounds our purblind understanding, will vanish at the dawning of eternal day.

  • God would not have made the universe as it is unless He intended us to understand it.

  • He that condescended so far, and stooped so low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not refuse us a gracious reception there.

  • He whose faith never doubted, may justly doubt of his faith.

  • I am not ambitious to appear a man of letters: I could be content the world should think I had scarce looked upon any other book than that of nature.

  • I look upon a good physician, not so properly as a servant to nature, as one, that is a counsellor and friendly assistant, who, in his patient's body, furthers those motions and other things, that he judges conducive to the welfare and recovery of it; but as to those, that he perceives likely to be hurtful, either by increasing the disease, or otherwise endangering the patient, he thinks it is his part to oppose or hinder, though nature do manifestly enough seem to endeavour the exercising or carrying on those hurtful motions.

  • I think myself obliged, whatever my private apprehensions may be of the success, to do my duty, and leave events to their Disposer.

  • I use the Scriptures, not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as a matchless temple, where I delight to be, to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe, and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored.

  • If the juices of the body were more chymically examined, especially by a naturalist, that knows the ways of making fixed bodies volatile, and volatile fixed, and knows the power of the open air in promoting the former of those operations; it is not improbable, that both many things relating to the nature of the humours, and to the ways of sweetening, actuating, and otherwise altering them, may be detected, and the importance of such discoveries may be discerned.

  • In an arch each single stone which, if severed from the rest, would be perhaps defenceless is sufficiently secured by the solidity and entireness of the whole fabric, of which it is a part.

  • In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

  • It is my intent to beget a good understanding between the chymists and the mechanical philosophers who have hitherto been too little acquainted with one another's learning.

  • Nature always looks out for the preservation of the universe.

  • Our Saviour would love at no less rate than death; and from the supereminent height of glory, stooped and debased Himself to the sufferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk himself to the bottom of abjectness, to exalt our condition to the contrary extreme.

  • Sound consists of an undulating motion of the air.

  • The book of nature is a fine and large piece of tapestry rolled up, which we are not able to see all at once, but must be content to wait for the discovery of its beauty, and symmetry, little by little, as it graduallly comes to be more and more unfolded, or displayed.

  • The generality of men are so accustomed to judge of things by their senses that, because the air is indivisible, they ascribe but little to it, and think it but one remove from nothing.

  • The veneration, wherewith Men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures of God. For many have not only look'd upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.

  • There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

  • Well, I see I am not designed to the finding out the Philosophers Stone, I have been so unlucky in my first attempts in chemistry.

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