“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”

“Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”

“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.”

“The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object....If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.”

“Though if infidels were to be converted by force, if those that are either blind or obstinate were to be drawn off from their errors by armed soldiers, we know very well that it was much more easy for Him to do it with armies of heavenly legions than for any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.”

“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”