Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.

You ask me how, with so much study, I manage to retene my health. Morpheus is my last companion; without 8 or 9 hours of him yr correspondent is not worth one scavenger's peruke. My practices did at ye first hurt my stomach, but now I eat heartily enou' as y' will see when I come down beside you.

Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.

An object that is at rest will tend to stay at rest. An object that is in motion will tend to stay in motion.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)