The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore.
If you are affronted it is better to pass it by in silence, or with a jest, though with some dishonor, than to endeavor revenge. If you can keep reason above passion, that and watchfulness will be your best defenders.
Pictures, propagated by motion along the fibers of the optic nerves in the brain, are the cause of vision.
Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us that the Lord will provide.
Every body persists in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces having impact upon it.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.
If I had waited for other people to make my tools and things for me, I would never have made anything.
Is not Fire a Body heated so hot as to emit Light copiously? For what else is a red hot Iron than Fire? And what else is a burning Coal than red hot Wood?
All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth.
The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension.
I understood. I have understood. I do understand.
I have been much amused at ye singular phenomena resulting from bringing of a needle into contact with a piece of amber or resin fricated on silke clothe. Ye flame putteth me in mind of sheet lightning on a small-how very small-scale.
Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external.
Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.
Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?
What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
The way to chastity is not to struggle directly with incontinent thoughts but to avert the thoughts by some imployment, or by reading, or meditating on other things.
When two forces unite, their efficiency doubles.