“The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of mans redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.”

God may rationally be supposed to have framed so great and admirable an automaton as the world for special ends and purposes.

In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

The veneration, wherewith Men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures of God. For many have not only look’d upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

I think myself obliged, whatever my private apprehensions may be of the success, to do my duty, and leave events to their Disposer.

Even when we find not what we seek, we find something as well worth seeking as what we missed.

In an arch each single stone which, if severed from the rest, would be perhaps defenceless is sufficiently secured by the solidity and entireness of the whole fabric, of which it is a part.

From a knowledge of His work, we shall know Him.

It is my intent to beget a good understanding between the chymists and the mechanical philosophers who have hitherto been too little acquainted with one another’s learning.

He whose faith never doubted, may justly doubt of his faith.

Well, I see I am not designed to the finding out the Philosophers Stone, I have been so unlucky in my first attempts in chemistry.

Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due con-templation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty.

The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration.

I am not ambitious to appear a man of letters: I could be content the world should think I had scarce looked upon any other book than that of nature.

God would not have made the universe as it is unless He intended us to understand it.

Nature always looks out for the preservation of the universe.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

No book ever ends, when it’s full of your friends.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.