“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.”
Commentary
Newton's image of himself as a child on a beach expresses humility before the scale of what remains unknown. It contrasts with the reputation for certainty that his work later gained.