Nazareth Quotes
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The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.
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It is hard to know what other way men can come to truth, to lay hold of it, if they do not dig and search for it as for gold and hid treasure; but he that does so, must have much earth and rubbish, before he gets the pure metal; sand, and pebbles, and dross usually lie blended with it, but the gold is nevertheless gold, and will enrich the man that employs his pains to seek and separate it.
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The discipline of desire is the background of character.
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To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.
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False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.
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There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.
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How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.
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Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule.
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All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.
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Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
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Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.
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Don't tell me what I can't do!
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Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.
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The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
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Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.
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What worries you, masters you.
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Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
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To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.
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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.
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Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
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It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.
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When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
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He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
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I pretend not to teach, but to inquire.