ALCHEMY

Related Subjects: Gold, Philosophy, Science

1. Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found no gold but by turning up the mould about the roots of their vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light.—BACON

2. If by fire
   Of sooty coal the empiric alchymist
   Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
   Metals of drossest ore to perfect gold.—MILTON, Paradise Lost

3. The foolish alchymist sought to make gold of iron, and made iron of gold.—Proverb

4. No alchymy like saving.—Proverb

5. I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose.—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE