I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.

There is not a single effect in Nature, not even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can ever arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is attained, would recognise that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.

Nature . . . is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, nor cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operations are understandable to men.