“Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.”
“Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.”
“Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.”
“Nature does not suffer her veil to be taken from her, and what she does not choose to reveal to the spirit, thou wilt not wrest from her by levers and screws.”
“Whenever I finally calm down at the primal phenomenon, it is really nothing more than resignation; yet a big difference remains, whether to resign at the restrictions of humanity or within the hypothetical restrictions of my daft individual.”