There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind , and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections:;; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason.

As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies, what are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch, only by repeated actions.

A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.