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 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.
ATTRIBUTION:
Isaac Newton (16421727), British physicist, mathematician, universal genius. Memoirs of Newton, v. II, ch. 27, ed. Brewster (1855).