Quote

Most people who have encountered mercury have done so after breaking a mercury thermometer. And many of us who saw the liquid balls of mercury scatter across a floor or countertop considered the element the most beautiful on the periodic table.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

When alchemists were talking about turning lead to gold, they were talking about turning a leaden consciousness, which most of us exist in during our lives, into a golden consciousness, which is a much better place to be.

No element gets people telling crazy stories like mercury does. People have told me tales about pharmacists waxing floors with mercury, mothers rubbing it into babies' skin to kill germs, and 10-year-olds coating dimes in it to make them shine, then blithely carrying them around in their pockets.

When first presented with the jumble of the periodic table, I scanned for mercury and couldn't find it. It is there - between gold, which is also dense and soft, and thallium, which is also poisonous. But the symbol for mercury, Hg, consists of two letters that don't even appear in its name.

Black Sabbath invented heavy metal, in my opinion.

Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.

This is our mercury, our lunary, but whosoever thinks of any other water besides this, is ignorant and foolish, never attaining to the desired effects.

If you look at the mythology of aliens, there's a lot about gold. It's about them coming for gold; whether that's a simplification or not. If you think of 'Chariot of the Gods,' there's this reoccurring theme of gold.

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.