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The empty husks that strike us
“It takes little to divert and distract us, for it takes little to hold us. We scarcely look at things in gross and alone; it is the minute and superficial circumstances and notions that strike us, and the empty husks that peel off from the things…” III.4 “Of diversion” (p. 770)
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Languid motion
“Stability itself is nothing but a more languid motion.” III.2 “Of repentance” (p.740)
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I portray passing
“I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness. I take it in this condition, just as it is at the moment I give my attention to it. I do not portray being: I portray passing.” III 2. “Of repentance” (p. 740).
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Surpass even miracles in obscurity
We have no need to go picking out miracles and remote difficulties; it seems to me that among the things we see ordinarily there are wonders so incomprehensible that they surpass even miracles in obscurity. II. 37 “Of the resemblance of children to fathers” (p. 619)
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Monsters
“What we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of his work the infinity of forms that he has comprised in it; and it is for us to believe that this figure that astonishes us is related and linked to some other figure of the same kind unknown to man.”…
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No good thing is exempt from some mixture of pain and discomfort
“The weakness of our condition makes it impossible for things to come into our experience in their natural simplicity and purity […] Of the pleasures and good things that we have, there is not one exempt from some mixture of pain and discomfort.” II. 20 “We taste nothing pure” (p. 619)
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As deep as I know how
“For I do not see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us. Of a hundred members and faces that each thing has, I take one, sometimes only to lick it, sometimes to brush the surface, sometimes to pinch it to the bone. I give it a stab, not…
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Secrets of the divine
“… a whole pile of people… clai[m] to find the causes of every incident and to see in the secrets of the divine will the incomprehensible motives of his works; and although the variety and continual discordance of events tosses them from corner to corner and from east to west, yet they do not stop…
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Nothing is so firmly believed
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known, nor are any people so confident as those who tell us fables, such as alchemists, prognosticators, astrologers, palmists, doctors…” I.32 “We should meddle soberly with judging divine ordinances” (p. 194) [Add to the list nowadays.]
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Judge by reason, not popular opinion
“Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason’s way, not by popular say.” I.31 “Of cannibals” (p.182)