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.

That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.

I imagine that thinking is the great desideratum of the present age; and the cause of whatever is done amiss may justly be reckoned the general neglect of education in those who need it most, the people of fashion. What can be expected where those who have the most influence have the least sense, and those who are sure to be followed set the worst examples?

But the velocities of the velocities - the second, third, fourth, and fifth velocities, etc. - exceed, if I mistake not, all human understanding.

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.

So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.