If what you mean by the word "matter" be only the unknown support of unknown qualities, it is no matter whether there is such a thing or no, since it no way concerns us; and I do not see the advantage there is in disputing about what we know not what, and we know not why.

To be is to be perceived

But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.

Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.

Certainly he who can digest a second or third fluxion need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.

If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.

Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.