Joseph Glanvill Quotes & Sayings

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. — Joseph Glanvill

The precipitancy of disputation, and the stir and noise of passions that usually attend it, must needs be prejudicial to verity. — Joseph Glanvill

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 — Joseph Glanvill

Justice is but the distributing to everything according to the requirements of its nature. — Joseph Glanvill

They that never peeped beyond the common belief in which their easy understandings were at first indoctrinated are strongly assured of the truth of their receptions. — Joseph Glanvill

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. — Joseph Glanvill

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

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

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. — Joseph Glanvill

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness, Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will. — Joseph Glanvill

The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis. — Joseph Glanvill

Time, as a river, hath brought down to us what is more light and superficial, while things more solid and substantial have been immersed. — Joseph Glanvill

It is the great beauty of true religion that it shall be universal, and a departure in any instance from universality is a corruption of religion itself. — Joseph Glanvill

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. — Joseph Glanvill

Some pretences daunt and discourage us, while others raise us to a brisk assurance. — Joseph Glanvill

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

There is nothing in words and styles out suitableness that makes them acceptable and effective. — Joseph Glanvill

What's impossible to all humanity may be possible to the metaphysics and physiology of angels. — Joseph Glanvill

The understanding also hath its idiosyncrasies as well as other faculties. — Joseph Glanvill

We have a mistaken notion of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world's nonage. — Joseph Glanvill

To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence. — Joseph Glanvill