What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Nothing can be created out of nothing.

Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions... How many evils has religion caused?

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

Fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, becasue thay see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine. for these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which every thing can be produced in which all things are done without the hands of the gods.