Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
There are some Men of one, some but of two Syllogisms, and no more; and others that can but advance one step farther.
And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies nothing, but the effect, videlicet that water, that was before fluid, is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done.
No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.
One or two particulars may suggest hints of enquiry, and they do well who take those hints; but if they turn them into conclusions, and make them presently general rules, they are forward indeed, but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for truths without sufficient warrant.
The law of faith then, in short, is for every one to believe what God requires him to believe, as a condition of the covenant he makes with him: and not to doubt of the performance of his promises.
Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.
THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.
Let not men think there is no truth but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read. To prejudge other men’s notions before we have looked into them is not to shew their darkness, but to put out our own eyes.
In many cases it is not one series of consequences will serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions must be examined and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judgment of the point in question. What then can be expected from men that neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as this, nor, if they do, know they how to set about it, or could perform it?
God; I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.
One hundred and one. No person above seventeen years of age shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor, who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record at once.
I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
He that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation puts out the Light of both, as one who pokes out eye to see .
Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us: and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.
The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them are simple and some complex.
Whenever law ends, tyranny begins.
She slept but little. In the morning she found habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein and faced the day.
Are you related to a Senator or some other type of career criminal?
He’s six-three, and so skinny my mom would say there’s more meat on a butcher’s apron.
Men always forget that human happiness is a disposition of mind and not a condition of circumstances.