Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Robert Boyle (Irish Scientist, Philosopher)

Robert Boyle (1627–91) was an Anglo-Irish chemist, physicist, and natural philosopher. Often considered the father of modern chemistry, he made significant contributions to chemistry, pneumatics, and the theory of matter. A foremost advocate of “corpuscular philosophy,” Boyle’s piousness was an impetus in his intellectual pursuits—it even incited a famous dispute with philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

Born at Lismore Castle, Munster, Ireland, Boyle studied at Eton and toured Europe for six years. He later settled on his family estates in Dorset and dedicated himself to science. He was one of the first members of the anti-scholastic ‘invisible college,’ an association of Oxford intellectuals who were against the prevailing doctrines of scholasticism—this association became the Royal Society in 1645.

After settling at Oxford in 1654, with Robert Hooke as his assistant, Boyle carried out experiments on air, vacuum, combustion, and respiration. Boyle exerted much influence on the 17th-century denunciation of the Aristotelian emphases on final causes, judging that all the properties of materials can be explained by the size, shape, and motion of particles, and the textures to which their associations give rise.

In 1661, Boyle published his The Sceptical Chymist, in which he criticized the contemporary theories of matter and described the chemical element as the practical limit of chemical analysis. In 1662, he formulated Boyle’s Law, which affirms that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional. He also investigated the calcination of metals, properties of acids and alkalis, specific gravity, crystallography and refraction, and first prepared phosphorus.

As a director of the East India Company, Boyle sponsored religious missions for the propagation of Christianity in the East and funded translations of the Scriptures into several languages. On top of his experimental work, Boyle left an extensive body of writings about philosophy and religion, containing Christian devotional and ethical essays and theological treatises on biblical language.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Robert Boyle

Self-denial is a kind of holy association with God; and by making him your partner interests him in all your happiness.
Robert Boyle

The things for which life is valuable are the satisfactions which come from the improvement of knowledge and the exercise of piety.
Robert Boyle
Topics: Life

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; its force depends on the strength of the hand that draws it.—But argument is like an arrow from a cross bow, which has equal force if drawn by a child or a man.
Robert Boyle
Topics: Character, Argument

As rivers, when they overflow, drown those grounds and ruin those husbandmen, which, whilst they flowed calmly betwixt their banks they fertilized and enriched, so our passions, when they grow exorbitant and unruly, destroy those virtues to which they might be very serviceable whilst kept within their bounds.
Robert Boyle
Topics: Passion

In an arch, each single stone, which, if severed from the rest, would be perhaps defenceless, is sufficiently secured by the solidity and entireness of the whole fabric of which it is a part.
Robert Boyle

As the sun is best seen at his rising and setting, so men’s native dispositions are clearest seen when they are children, and when they are dying.
Robert Boyle
Topics: Character

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