What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!

Doth the Reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?

The real essence, the internal qualities, and constitution of even the meanest object, is hid from our view; something there is inevery drop of water, every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human understanding to fathom or comprehend. But it is evidentthat we are influenced by false principles to that degree as to mistrust our senses, and think we know nothing of those things which we perfectly comprehend.

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

Man is an Animal, formidable both from his Passions and his Reason; his Passions often urging him to great Evils, and his Reason furnishing Means to achieve them. To train this Animal, and make him amenable to Order; to inure him to a Sense of Justice and Virtue, to withhold him from ill Courses by Fear, and encourage him in his Duty by Hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for Society, hath been the Aim of civil and religious Institutions; and, in all Times, the Endeavour of good and wise Men. The aptest Method for attaining this End, hath been always judged a proper Education.

There being in the make of an English mind a certain gloom and eagerness, which carries to the sad extreme; religion to fanaticism; free-thinking to atheism; liberty to rebellion.

I do not deny the existence of material substance merely because I have no notion of it, but because the notion of it is inconsistent, or in other words, because it is repugnant that there should be a notion of it.