Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Joseph Glanvill

It is an unaccountable vanity to spend all our time raking into the scraps and imperfect remains of former ages, and neglecting the clearer notices of our own.

The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis.

We have a mistaken notion of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world’s nonage.

Those that would be genteelly learned need not purchase it at the dear rate of being atheists.

Those the impiety of whose lives makes them regret a deity, and secretly wish there were none, will greedily listen to atheistical notions.

Brave wits that have made essays worthy of immortality, yet by reason of envious and more popular opposers have submitted to fate, and are almost lost in oblivion.

The precipitancy of disputation, and the stir and noise of passions that usually attend it, must needs be prejudicial to verity: its calm insinuations can no more be heard in such a bustle than a whistle among a crowd of sailors in a storm.

That divers limners at a distance, without either copy or design, should draw the same picture to an indistinguishable exactness, is more conceivable than that matter, which is so diversified, should frame itself so unerringly, according to the idea of its kind.

What is early received into any considerable strength of impress grows into our tender natures, and therefore is of difficult remove.

Another account of the shortness of our reason, and easiness of deception, is the forwardness of our understanding’s assent to slightly examined conclusions.

The dogmatist’s opinioned assurance is paramount to argument.

Did we but compare the miserable scantness of our capacities with the vast profundity of things, truth and modesty would teach us wary language.

The imagination, which is of simple perception, doth never of itself, and directly, mislead us, yet it is the almost fatal means of our deception.

To confine the imagination is as facile a performance as the Goteham’s design of hedging in the cuckoo.

The most improved spirits are frequently caught in the entanglements of a tenacious imagination.

Advantage obtained by industry directed by philosophy can never be expected from drudging ignorance.

Fixed seriousness heats the brain in some to distraction, and causeth an aching and dizziness in sounder heads.

Affection blinds the judgment, and we cannot expect an equitable award where the judge is made a party.

The judgment being the leading power, if it be stored with lubricous opinions instead of clearly conceived truths, and peremptorily resolved in them, the practice will be as irregular as the conceptions.

There is an exact geometrical justice that runs through the universe, and is interwoven in the contexture of things. This is a result of that wise and almighty goodness that presides over all things.

For this justice is but the distributing to everything according to the requirements of its nature.

While man was innocent he was likely ignorant of nothing that imported him to know.

The most pompous seeming knowledge that is built on the unexamined prejudices of sense, stands not.

It is the interest of mankind, in order to the advance of knowledge, to be sensible they have yet attained it but in poor and diminutive measure.

The fancies of men are so immediately diversified by the individual crasis that every man owns something wherein none is like him.

In the temperate zone of our life there are few bodies at such an equipoise of humours but that the prevalency of some one indisposeth the spirits.

If memory be made by the easy motions of the spirits through the opened passages, images (without doubt) pass through the same apertures.

Things are reserved in the memory by some corporeal exuviæ and material images which, having impinged on the common sense, rebound thence into some vacant cells of the brain.

The mind of man is too light to bear much certainty among the ruffling winds of passion and opinion; and if the luggage be prized equally with the jewels, none will be lost out till all be shipwrecked.

To say the principles of nature must needs be such as philosophy makes it, is to set bounds to omnipotence.

It is a greater credit to know the ways of captivating Nature, and making her subserve our purposes, than to have learned all the intrigues of policy.

Obstinacy in opinions holds the dogmatist in the chains of error, without hope of emancipation.

Striking at the root of pedantry and opinionative assurance would be no hindrance to the world’s improvement.

That the Aristotelian philosophy is a huddle of words and terms insignificant has been the censure of the wisest.

Many of the most accomplished wits of all ages have resolved their knowledge into Socrates his sum total, and after all their pains in quest of science have sat down in a professed nescience.

He that enjoyed crowns, and knew their worth, excepted them not out of the charge of universal vanity; and yet the politician is not discouraged at the inconstancy of human affairs, and the lubricity of his subject.

It is greater to understand the art whereby the Almighty governs the motions of the great automaton than to have learned the intrigues of policy.

They that never peeped beyond the common belief in which their easy understandings were at first indoctrinated, are strongly assured of the truth of their receptions.

Some pretences daunt and discourage us, while others raise us to a brisk assurance.

’Twas this vain idolizing of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent citations: these ridiculous fooleries signify nothing to the more generous discerners but the pedantry of the affected sciolists.

We come into the world, and know not how: we live in it in a state of self-nescience, and go hence again, and are as ignorant of our recess.

He that knows most of himself, knows least of his knowledge, and the exercised understanding is conscious of its disability.

The weakness of human understanding all will confess. Yet the confidence of most practically disowns it; and it is easier to persuade them of it from others’ lapses than their own.

Some believe the soul made by God, some by angels, and some by the generant: whether it be immediately created or traduced hath been the great ball of contention.

If our souls are but particles and deceptions of our parents, then I must have been guilty of all the sins ever committed by my parents.

Those mercurial spirits, which were only lent the earth to show men their folly in admiring it, possess delights of a nobler make and nature which antedate immortality.

There is nothing in words and styles but suitableness that makes them acceptable and effective.

Time, as a river, hath brought down to us what is more light and superficial, while things more solid and substantial have been immersed.

Perhaps human nature meets few more sweetly relishing and cleanly joys than those that derive from successful trials.

Truths hang together in a chain of mutual dependence; you cannot draw one link without attracting others.

The understanding also hath its idiosyncrasies as well as other faculties.

Those successes are more glorious which bring benefit to the world than such ruinous ones as are dyed in human blood.

The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the garden; and our understandings are wedded to an Eve as fatal as the mother of their miseries.

Manly spirit and genius plays not tricks with words, nor frolics with the caprice of a frothy imagination.

All things being double-handed, and having the appearances both of truth and falsehood, where our affections have engaged us we attend only to the former.

Methinks ’tis a pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an index; and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another’s treasure.