Sir Isaac Newton.
[1022]. On one occasion, when he was giving a dinner to some friends at the university, he left the table to get them a bottle of wine; but, on his way to the cellar, he fell into reflection, forgot his errand and his company, went to his chamber, put on his surplice, and proceeded to the chapel. Sometimes he would go into the street half dressed, and on discovering his condition, run back in great haste, much abashed. Often, while strolling in his garden, he would suddenly stop, and then run rapidly to his room, and begin to write, standing, on the first piece of paper that presented itself. Intending to dine in the public hall, he would go out in a brown study, take the wrong turn, walk a while, and then return to his room, having totally forgotten the dinner. Once having dismounted from his horse to lead him up a hill, the horse slipped his head out of the bridle; but Newton, oblivious, never discovered it till, on reaching a tollgate at the top of the hill, he turned to remount and perceived that the bridle which he held in his hand had no horse attached to it. His secretary records that his forgetfulness of his dinner was an excellent thing for his old housekeeper, who “sometimes found both dinner and supper scarcely tasted of, which the old woman has very pleasantly and mumpingly gone away with.” On getting out of bed in the morning, he has been discovered to sit on his bedside for hours without dressing himself, utterly absorbed in thought.—Parton, James.
Sir Isaac Newton.
[1023]. I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only as a boy playing on the seashore, 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.—Newton, I.
Quoted by Rev. J. Spence: Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men (London, 1858), p. 40.
[1024]. If I have seen farther than Descartes, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.—Newton, I.
Quoted by James Parton: Sir Isaac Newton.
[1025]. Newton could not admit that there was any difference between him and other men, except in the possession of such habits as ... perseverance and vigilance. When he was asked how he made his discoveries, he answered, “by always thinking about them;“ and at another time he declared that if he had done anything, it was due to nothing but industry and patient thought: “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”—Whewell, W.
History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5.
[1026]. Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.—Ball, W. W. R.