26 Quotes by Joseph Glanvill

Thomas Aquinas is but Aristotle sainted.

The ignorant Looker-on can't imagine what the Limner means by those seemingly rude Lines and Scrawls, which he intends for the Rudiments of a Picture, and the Figures of Mathematick Operation are Nonsense, and Dashes at a Venture, to one uninstructed in Mechanicks. We are in the Dark to one another's Purposes and Intendments; and there are a thousand Intrigues in our little Matters, which will not presently confess their Design, even to sagacious Inquisitors

The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the garden.

We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers.

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured.

That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

The union of a sect within itself is a pitiful charity; it's no concord of Christians, but a conspiracy against Christ; and they that love one another for their opinionative concurrence, love for their own sakes, not their Lord's.