Forever all goodness will be most charming; forever all wickedness will be most odious.
Thomas SpratPassion is the great mover and spring of the soul. When men’s passions are strongest, they may have great and noble effects; but they are then also apt to fall into the greatest miscarriages.
Thomas SpratAre we not to pity and supply the poor, though they have no relation to us? No relation? That cannot be. The Gospel styles them all our brethren.
Thomas SpratThey have never affirm'd any thing, concerning the cause, till the trial was past: whereas, to do it before, is a most venomous thing in the making of Sciences: for whoever has fix'd on his Cause, before he has experimented; can hardly avoid fitting his Experiment, and his Observations, to his Own Cause, which he had before imagin'd; rather than the Cause to the Truth of the Experiment itself. Referring to experiments of the Aristotelian mode, whereby a preconceived truth would be illustrated merely to convince people of the validity of the original thought.
Thomas Sprat