To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus be essential or inherent n it. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act on another, at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is, to me, so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who, in philosophical matters, has a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
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 ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
