Top 35 Isaac Barrow Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.”

— Isaac Barrow

2. “Mathematics – the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.”

— Isaac Barrow

3. “It is commonly said that revenge is sweet, but to a calm and considerate mind, patience and forgiveness are sweeter.”

— Isaac Barrow

4. “As a stick, when once it is dry and stiff you may break it, but you can never bend it into a straighter posture; so doth the man become incorrigible who is settled and stiffened into vice.”

— Isaac Barrow

5. “Slander is a complication, a comprisal and sum of all wickedness.”

— Isaac Barrow

6. “Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness.”

— Isaac Barrow

7. “Smiling always with a never fading serenity of countenance, and flourishing in an immortal youth.”

— Isaac Barrow

8. “The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.”

— Isaac Barrow

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9. “Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young, being but the second year master of arts; but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency.”

— Isaac Barrow

10. “Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the farther on we go, the more we have to come back.”

— Isaac Barrow

11. “In defiance of all the tortue, of all the might, of all the malice of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich; for God’s providence is his estate, God’s wisdom and power are his defence, God’s love and favor are his reward, and God’s word is his security.”

— Isaac Barrow

12. “Every ear is tickled with the sweet music of applause.”

— Isaac Barrow

13. “If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church.”

— Isaac Barrow

14. “Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world’s unkindly weather.”

— Isaac Barrow

15. “The proper work of man, the grand drift of human life, is to follow reason, that noble spark kindled in us from heaven.”

— Isaac Barrow

16. “If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous.”

— Isaac Barrow

17. “Because Mathematicians frequently make use of Time, they ought to have a distinct idea of the meaning of that Word, otherwise they are Quacks.”

— Isaac Barrow

18. “It consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language.”

— Isaac Barrow

19. “Nothing hath wrought more prejudice to religion, or brought more disparagement upon truth, than boisterous and unseasonable zeal.”

— Isaac Barrow

20. “Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.”

— Isaac Barrow

21. “Even private persons in due season, with discretion and temper, may reprove others, whom they observe to commit sin, or follow bad courses, out of charitable design, and with hope to reclaim them.”

— Isaac Barrow

22. “We may be as good as we please, if we please to be good.”

— Isaac Barrow

23. “That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God’s will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively.”

— Isaac Barrow

24. “There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature divers seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which, being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do, by common experience, thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness.”

— Isaac Barrow

25. “The fruits of the earth do not more obviously require labor and cultivation to prepare them for our use and subsistence, than our faculties demand instruction and regulation in order to qualify us to become upright and valuable members of society, useful to others, or happy ourselves.”

— Isaac Barrow

26. “Industry has annexed thereto the fairest fruits and the richest rewards.”

— Isaac Barrow

27. “I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters.”

— Isaac Barrow

28. “Generosity is nothing more seen than in a candid estimation of other men’s virtues and good qualities.”

— Isaac Barrow

29. “It is safe to make a choice of your thoughts, scarcely ever safe to express them all.”

— Isaac Barrow

30. “None are too wise to be mistaken, but few are so wisely just as to acknowledge and correct their mistakes, and especially the mistakes of prejudice.”

— Isaac Barrow

31. “Let us consider that swearing is a sin of all others peculiarly clamorous, and provocative of Divine judgment.”

— Isaac Barrow

32. “Shall we keep our hands in our bosom, or stretch ourselves on our beds of laziness, while all the world about us is hard at work, in pursuing the designs of its creation?”

— Isaac Barrow

33. “No man speaketh, or should speak, of his prince, that which he hath not weighed whether it will consist with that veneration which should be preserved inviolate to him.”

— Isaac Barrow

34. “Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.”

— Isaac Barrow

35. “Nature has concatenated our fortunes and affections together with indissoluble bands of mutual sympathy.”

— Isaac Barrow

36. “Because men believe not in Providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing.”

— Isaac Barrow

37. “That in affairs of very considerable importance men should deal with one another with satisfaction of mind, and mutual confidence, they must receive competent assurances concerning the integrity, fidelity, and constancy each of other.”

— Isaac Barrow