It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes 104 to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.

Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.

It is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other 103 noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation.

Man’s external form, marvelously constructed, is not much as compared with the divine soul that dwells inside that structure.

He who fears dangers will not perish by them.

A man was desired to rise from bed because the sun was already up. He replied: “If I had as far to go and as much 102 to do as he has, I should be up by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not get up yet.

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.