Isaac Newton

light impinging on a refracting or reflecting ethereal superficies puts it into a vibrating motion

light and ether mutually act upon one another. ...æthereal vibrations are therefore the best means by which such a subtile agent as light can shake the gross particles of solid bodies to heat them.

I would suppose it diverse from the vibrations of the ether

whatever light be, I would suppose it consists of successive rays differing from one another in contingent circumstances, as bigness, force, or vigour

light is neither ether nor its vibrating motion, but something of a different kind propagated from lucid bodies. They that will may suppose it an aggregate of various peripatetic qualities. Others may suppose it multitudes of unimaginable …

the ethereal vibrations differ in bigness but not in swiftness

the ether is a vibrating medium, like air, only the vibrations much more swift and minute

there is an ethereal medium, much of the same constitution as air, but far rarer, subtiller, and more strongly elastic

Were I to assume an hypothesis, it should be this

Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure remarks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great …

I have studied these things — you have not.

I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

When I wrote my treatise about our System, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the …

the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases

Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves

Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center.

I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or …