William Harvey

The blood flows from the right ventricle through the lungs to the left auricle.

The heart is the beginning of life, the first to live, and the last to die.

It is better to know a little perfectly than to know much imperfectly.

The heart is like a king, sitting in the middle of his kingdom, sending out commands to the periphery.

I have seen the testicles of a hanged man twitch for a full hour after death, as if they still longed for life.

All we know is that the blood is in motion, but what sets it in motion is God’s secret.

The heart is the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm.

Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows traces of her workings apart from the beaten path.

The blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion.

I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections.

The examination of the bodies of animals has always been my delight.

There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.

The heart is the household divinity which, discharging its function, nourishes, cherishes, quickens the whole body.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

The semen is the efficient cause and the egg the material cause of generation.

What remains to be said is of so novel and unheard of a character that I not only fear injury to myself from the envy of a few, but I tremble lest I have mankind at large for my enemies, so much to wont and custom that become as another nature, and doctrine once sown that hath struck deep root, and respect for antiquity, influence all men.

I have often wondered and even laughed at those who fancied that everything had been so consummately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen or some other mighty name, that nothing could by any possibility be added to their knowledge.

The heart is the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well be designated the heart of the world; for it is the heart by whose virtue and pulse the blood is moved, perfected, made apt to nourish, and is preserved from corruption and coagulation; it is the household divinity which, discharging its function, nourishes, cherishes, quickens the whole body, and is indeed the foundation of life, the source of all action.

The animal's heart is the basis of its life, its chief member, the sun of its microcosm; on the heart all its activity depends, from the heart all its liveliness and strength arise. Equally is the king the basis of his kingdoms, the sun of his microcosm, the heart of the state; from him all power arises and all grace stems.

There is no science which does not spring from pre-existing knowledge, and no certain and definite idea which has not derived its origin from the senses.