So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.

Be that as it may, there is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created. How do I know that he did not bring it about that there is no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, and yet bringing it about that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they do now?

The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.

Situations in life often permit no delay; and when we cannot determine the course which is certainly best, we must follow the one which is probably the best. This frame of mind freed me also from the repentance and remorse commonly felt by those vacillating individuals who are always seeking as worthwhile things which they later judge to be bad.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.

Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.