...from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.
Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.
The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart, and prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence.
Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.
I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.
I do not wish you to act from these truths; no, still and always act from your feelings; only meditate often on these truths that sometime or other they may become your feelings.
...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome.
I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they may be treble distilled, and as it were super-substantiated.