 Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument. Topics: Patience |
| Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession. Topics: Perseverance, Circumstances |
| A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does. Topics: Praise |
| Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light. Topics: Preaching |
| Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking; they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative. Topics: Preaching |
| Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment. Topics: Reading, Meditation |
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| Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden. Topics: Reasoning |
| Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature. Topics: Reasoning, Judging |
| Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above the beasts, in this lower world. Topics: Reasoning |
| The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on everything; and the soul tinctured with any passion diffuses a false color over the appearance of things. Topics: Reasoning, Passion |
| The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest. Topics: Religion, Passion |
| In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome. Topics: Scripture |
