Robert Boyle Quotes

“And then for English verses, he said, they could not be certain of lasting applause, the changes of our language being so great and sudden, that the rarest poems within few years will pass for obsolete; and therefore he used to liken the writers in English verse to ladies, that have their pictures drawn with the clothes now worn, which, though at present never so rich, and never so much in fashion, within a few years hence will make them look like anticks.”
― Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle'

“He was careful to instruct him in such an affable, kind, and gentle way, that he easily prevailed with him to consider studying, not so much as a duty of obedience to his superiors, but as the way to purchase for himself a most delightsom and invaluable good. In effect, he soon created in Philaretus so strong a passion to acquire knowledge, that what time he could spare from a scholar's task, which his retentive memory made him not find uneasy, he would usually employ so greedily in reading, that his master would sometimes be necessitated to force him out to play, on which, and upon study, he looked, as if their natures were inverted.”
― Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle'

“A blind man will suffer himself to be led, though by a dog, or a child.”
― Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle'

“His primitive fault was only a dotage on play, yet the excessive love of that goes seldom unattended with a train of criminal retainers; for fondness of gaming is the seducingest lure to ill company, and that the subtlest pander to the worst excesses.”
― Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle'

“Not needlessly to confound the herald with the historian, and begin a relation by a pedigree, I shall content myself to inform you [only gives, thankfully, his mother and father].”
― Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle'