Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!

Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing?

Now, as God the maker play'd he taught the game to Nature whom he created in his image; taught her the selfsame game which he played to her.

So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.

...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.

I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.