Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former.

Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.

Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . .

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.

The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.

Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.