“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.”

The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent agent.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.

The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially, for virtue cannot subsist without substance.

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.