"It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline."

Quote from a letter from Sir Isaac Newton to one Collins, 18 February 1669/70:

The solution of the annuity problem, if it will be of any use, you have my leave to insert it into the Philosophical Transactions, so it be without my name to it. For I see not what there is desirable in public esteem, were I able to acquire and maintain it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline.

Found when I flipped through Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, edited by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (with an index by Augustus de Morgan!).