“It is reasonable that forces directed toward bodies depend on the nature and the quantity of matter of such bodies, as happens in the case of magnetic bodies.”

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

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

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.

A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force.

I see I have made my self a slave to philosophy.

You have to make the rules, not follow them.

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

Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

Let me think – I wonder if an anvil will drop like an apple?

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

When two forces unite, their efficiency double.

The best way to understanding is a few good examples.

The great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The centre of the system of the world is immovable.

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.

I may be skinny, but my love for you – its heavier than heavy.

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.

I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.

We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they’re capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don’t care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they’ve done wrong.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.