All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.

In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.

It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause

It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.

The first ideas of religion arose, not from contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life.