Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward.

Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.

Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.

Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.

Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.