For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.

To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.

Don't tell me what I can't do!

When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success.

Merit and good works is the end of man's motion; and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest; for if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest.

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.