Thomas Reid Quotes
The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
The fear of the evils of body and of fortune, is often a greater evil than the things we fear.
We account him a wise man, who is wise for himself ; and, if he prosecutes this end through difficulties and this end through difficulties and temptations that lie in his way.
As beauty is not a quality of the object, but a certain feeling of the spectator, so virtue and vice are not qualities are not qualities in the persons to whom language ascribes them, but feelings of the spectator.
Have not men of genius in former ages often made their own dreams to pass for her oracles?
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
But the road to happiness, if that be supposed the only end our nature leads us to pursue, would be found dark and intricate, full of snares and dangers, and therefore not to be trodden without fear, and care, and perplexity.
It is evident, that desire and aversion, joy and grief, hope and fear, may be either calm and sedate, or vehement and passionate.
How happy is that mind, in which the light of real knowledge dispels the phantoms of superstition ; in which the belicf and reverence of a perfect, all governing Mind casts out all fear but the fear of acting wrong ; in which serenity and cheerfulness, innocence, humanity, and candour, guard the imagination against the entrance of every unhallowed intruder, and invite more amiable and worthier guests to dwell.
As there is no quality, common to good and bad men, more esteemed thancourage, nor any thing in a man more the object of contempt than cowardice ; hence every man desires to be thought a man of courage ; and the reputation of cowardice is worse than death. How many have died to avoid being thought cowards? How many, for the fame reason, have done what made them unhappy to the end of their lives.
Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.
