C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Stillingfleet

A story should, to please, at least seem true,

Be apropos, well told, concise, and new:

And whenso’er it deviates from these rules,

The wise will sleep, and leave applause to fools.

Spite of all the fools that pride has made,

’Tis not on man a useless burthen laid;

Pride has ennobled some, and some disgraced;

It hurts not in itself, but as ’tis placed;

When right, its views know none but virtue’s bound;

When wrong, it scarcely looks one inch around.

’Tis good nature only wins the heart;

It moulds the body to an easy grace

And brightens every feature of the face;

It smoothes th’ unpolish’d tongue with eloquence

And adds persuasion to the finest sense.

Astrological prayers seem to me to be built on as good reason as the predictions.

Error is but the shadow of the truth.

Kircher lays it down as a certain principle, that there never was any people so rude which did not acknowledge and worship one supreme Deity.

Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.

Peace and wickedness are far asunder.

Philosophers and common heathen believed one God, to whom all things were referred; but under this God they worshipped many inferior and subservient gods.

Prayer among men is supposed a means to change the person to whom we pray; but prayer to God doth not change him, but fits us to receive the things prayed for.

See how the skilful lover spreads his toils.

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