You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it.

Philosophy is for the few.

O that the gods would bring to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which the minds of the studious are blinded!

The magnet's name the observing Grecians drew. From the magnetic region where it grew.

The magnetic force is animate, or imitates a soul; in many respects it surpasses the human soul while it is united to an organic body.

A lodestone is a wonderful thing in very many experiments, and like living things. And one of its remarkable virtues in that which the ancients considered to be a living soul in the sky, in the globes and in the stars, in the sun and in the moon.

If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or, trust me, you haven't a chance.