Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.

Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule.

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.

In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.

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