God Is An Ever-present Spirit Guiding All

I Say Then, That Belief Is Nothing But A More Vivid, Lively, Forcible, Firm, Steady Conception Of An Object, Than What The Imagination Alone Is Ever Able To Attain. This Variety Of Terms, Which May Seem So Unphilosophical, Is Intended Only To Express That Act Of The Mind, Which Renders Realities, Or What Is Taken For Such, More Present To Us Than Fictions, Causes Them To Weigh More In The Thought, And Gives Them A Superior Influence On The Passions And Imagination.

Reason Is, And Ought Only To Be The Slave Of The Passions, And Can Never Pretend To Any Other Office Than To Serve And Obey Them.

Reading And Sauntering And Lounging And Dosing, Which I Call Thinking, Is My Supreme Happiness.

When The Coherence Of The Parts Of A Stone, Or Even That Composition Of Parts Which Renders It Extended; When These Familiar Objects, I Say, Are So Inexplicable, And Contain Circumstances So Repugnant And Contradictory; With What Assurance Can We Decide Concerning The Origin Of Worlds, Or Trace Their History From Eternity To Eternity?

Friendship Is A Calm And Sedate Affection, Conducted By Reason And Cemented By Habit; Springing From Long Acquaintance And Mutual Obligations, Without Jealousies Or Fears, And Without Those Feverish Fits Of Heat And Cold, Which Cause Such An Agreeable Torment In The Amorous Passion.