Men's happiness or misery is [for the] most part of their own making.

Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

Brutes abstract not. -- If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.

Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.

Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

I thought that I had no time for faith nor time to pray, then I saw an armless man saying his Rosary with his feet.

The Ideas of primary Qualities of Bodies, are Resemblances of them, and their Patterns do really exist in the Bodies themselves; but the Ideas, produced in us by these Secondary Qualities, have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our Ideas, existing in the Bodies themselves. They are in Bodies, we denominate from them, only a Power to produce those Sensations in us: And what is Sweet, Blue or Warm in Idea, is but the certain Bulk, Figure, and Motion of the insensible parts in the Bodies themselves, which we call so.