How does the world recognizes England, the United Kingdom, as the country that gave birth to the modern age? It was not Newton but Galilei who opened the Moderna age.

After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank tea under the shade of some apple trees; only he & myself. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self; occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood. "Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. The sum of the drawing power in the matter must be in the earth's center, not in any side of the earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly or toward the center. If matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion to its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple."

Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We knew her woof, her texture: she is given in the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule of line. Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made. The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.

The landscape has been so totally changed, the ways of thinking have been so deeply affected, that it is very hard to get hold of what it was like before... It is very hard to realize how total a change in outlook he has produced.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.

I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.

Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.

The Simplicity of Figures depend upon the Simplicity of their Genesis and Ideas, and an Æquation is nothing else than a Description (either Geometrical or Mechanical) by which a Figure is generated and rendered more easy to the Conception.