The usual consolations of life, friendship and sex included, appealed to Newton hardly at all. Art, literature, and music had scarcely more allure. He dismissed the classical sculptures in the Earl of Pembroke's renowned collection as "stone dolls." He waved poetry aside as "a kind of ingenious nonsense." He rejected opera after a single encounter. "The first Act I heard with pleasure, the 2d stretch'd my patience, at the 3d I ran away.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age it is much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others who come after you

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent

Before Newton the English word gravity denoted a mood—seriousness, solemnity….

Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.

Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.

Perhaps the most important contribution to science that the Royal Society has made in its three centuries of existence is its early role in publishing Newton's masterful account of his discoveries.

I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use...{Writing about Isaac Newton}