Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge.
The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.
He that in the ordinary affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration would be sure of nothing in this world but of perishing quickly.
Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as streight: and Men may be as positive and peremptory in Error as in Truth.
There are two sides, two players. One is light, the other is dark.
Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.
A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.
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.
Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature.
The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.
The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.
What humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us.
So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
Any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight, which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we call love.
Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.
There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.
Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.