Philosophical Sayings

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.

I am for doing good to the poor, but... I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they prov…

Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

To check the petulance of the Sailors, and restrain the wanton use of Fire Arms. To have it still in view that sheding the blood of those people is a crime of the highest nature.

we attempt to land in a peaceable manner, if this succeeds its well, if not we land nevertheless and maintain the footing we thus got by the Superiority of our fire arms, in what other light can they than at first look upon us but as invaders of thei…

The capacity of man himself is only revealed when, under stress and responsibility, he breaks through his educational shell, and he may then be a splendid surprise to himself no less than to this teachers.

From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessar…

They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit. . .. They may naturally and justly attempt to repell intruders, whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet poss…

If a tree dies, plant another in its place.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

When all the thoughts are concerning one thing and the person loses interest in other things, the melancholy begins.

When the spiritual light is concentrated in the brain, everything else must be sinking in the dark.

¿Qué tiene de extraño que yo no vea a Dios si no puedo ver siquiera al Yo que vive en mí?

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.

Nature does not make any leaps. (Natura non facit saltus)

These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.

The Earth's Creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone.