The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.

First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue.

Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.