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The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension.
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It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.
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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.
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Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.
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Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.
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The main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phænomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these, and to such like Questions.
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He rules all things, not as the world soul but as the lord of all. And because of his dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator". For “god" is a relative word and has reference to servants, and godhood is the lordship of God, not over his own body "as is supposed by those for whom God is the world soul', but over servants.
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Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.
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I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
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I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
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If I am anything, which I highly doubt, I have made myself so by hard work.
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You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it.
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Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done! [Apocryphal]
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Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure (precise or imprecise) of duration by means of motion; such as a measure-for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year-is commonly used instead of true time.
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There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history.
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And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
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When two forces unite, their efficiency double.
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'Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least.
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Now the smallest Particles of Matter may cohere by the strongest Attractions, and compose bigger Particles of weaker Virture.... There are therefore Agents in Nature able to make the Particles of Bodies stick together by very strong Attraction. And it is the Business of experimental Philosophy to find them out.
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Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external.
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My principal method for defeating error and heresy is by establishing the truth. One purposes to fill a bushel with tares, but if I can fill it first with wheat, I may defy his attempts.
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What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
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Hypotheses non fingo. I frame no hypotheses.
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I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.