"...and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this Spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be explain’d in few words, nor are we furnish’d with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic spirit operates." -Issac Newton, Principia Mathematica (1687)
"Works are immortal in themselves, and once committed to writing, may live forever. Of Alexander the Great we have but the name and the record; but Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Horace are alive, and as directly at work today as they were in their own lifetime" -Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

"Reading maketh a full man [sic]; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." -Francis Bacon, Of Studies (1625)
“He who can say how he burns, burns little." -Michel de Montaigne (quoting Petrarch), Of Sorrow (1580)
"Whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." -Attributed to John Locke (1632-1704)
“No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.” -Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

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