The Great Art To Learn Much Is

Reading Furnishes The Mind Only With Materials Of Knowledge; It Is Thinking That Makes What We Read Ours.

The Acts Of The Mind, Wherein It Exerts Its Power Over Simple Ideas, Are Chiefly These Three: 1. Combining Several Simple Ideas Into One Compound One, And Thus All Complex Ideas Are Made. 2. The Second Is Bringing Two Ideas, Whether Simple Or Complex, Together, And Setting Them By One Another So As To Take A View Of Them At Once, Without Uniting Them Into One, By Which It Gets All Its Ideas Of Relations. 3. The Third Is Separating Them From All Other Ideas That Accompany Them In Their Real Existence: This Is Called Abstraction, And Thus All Its General Ideas Are Made.

That Which Is Static And Repetitive Is Boring. That Which Is Dynamic And Random Is Confusing. In Between Lies Art.

Earthly Minds, Like Mud Walls, Resist The Strongest Batteries; And Though, Perhaps, Sometimes The Force Of A Clear Argument May Make Some Impression, Yet They Nevertheless Stand Firm, Keep Out The Enemy, Truth, That Would Captivate Or Disturbe Them.

A Man May Live Long, And Die At Last In Ignorance Of Many Truths, Which His Mind Was Capable Of Knowing, And That With Certainty.