Quotes

Some of Isaac Newton’s Confessed Childhood Sins

Threatening my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them

Neglecting to pray

Falling out with the servants

Calling Dorothy Rose a jade

Punching my sister

Peevishness with my mother

Making a mousetrap on a Sunday morning

Swimming in a kimnel (tub) on Thy day

Eating an apple in church

Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar

Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother although I knew of it

Having unclean thoughts

Refusing to go to the close (field) on my mothers command

Peevishness over a piece of bread and butter at Mr. Clarks

Stealing cherry cobs from Edward Storer

Beating Arthur Storer

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Quotes

Newton was the greatest mind in British History.

His temperament was volatile, sensitive and egocentric. He could be steady, resolute and generous. Sensual and aesthetic experiences were denied to Newton. Food and drink meant nothing to him. Verse was an antic game with words. Music a tedious jumble of sounds, He never spoke of a picture.

A. Rupert Hall.

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Newtons findings, of the laws of gravity and motion, was the greatest intellectual stride that it has ever been granted to any man to make.
Albert Einstein.

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What Newton did he did with intensity. He questioned the reason for everything.
Richard S. Westfall.

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Newton was a colossus without parallel in the history of science. His theory will never be outmoded. Designed to predict the motions of heavenly bodies, it does its job with unbelievable accuracy — better than one part in a hundred million for the motion of the earth round the sun. It remains in daily use to predict the orbits of moons and planets, comets and spacecraft
Stephen Hawking. Lucasian Professor, Cambridge.

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He had a broad forehead and an expression of concentrated meditation .His nose was long, thin and prominent. His chin was square and broad. He was of middle height and stout in later years. He had a lively and piercing eye, a comely and gracious aspect, with a fine head of white hair.
John Conduitt.

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If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke.

In May 1665 Newton tore a corner off a letter from his mother to write a formula on the back. The following is all that remains of the correspondence:-
Isack
Received your letter and I perceive you ..
letter from mee with your cloth but .
none to you. Your sisters present thai ..
love to you with my motherly lov
you and prayers to God for you.
Your loving mother
Hanah.

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Newtons reaction to someone opposing his ideas:- Stop telling me what so and so thinks but prove my results are wrong or provide new and different results.

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Newton to Edmund Halley, who was trying to persuade him to publish Principia Book 111:- Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in law suits as have to do with her. To which Halley replied “ Let not your resentments run so high as to deprive us of your third book”

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Newton to John Collins who was suspected of showing Leibniz some papers on Fluxions I could wish to retract what has been done but by that I have learnt whats to my convenience which is to let what I write ly by till I am out of ye way.

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May 1694 to Nathaniel Hawes :- 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

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To an unnamed companion in his old age:- I do not know what I may seem 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 ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
winclavering@ukpeople.com

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