Isaac Watts - The Improvement of the Mind (1741)

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Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.

Isaac Watts
Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

Isaac Watts
Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment.

Isaac Watts
Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence.

Isaac Watts
Disputation carries away the mind from that calm and sedate temper which is so necessary to contemplate truth.

Isaac Watts
Alexander the Great…when he had conquered what was called the Eastern World…wept for want of more Worlds to conquer.

Isaac Watts
The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on everything; and the soul tinctured with any passion diffuses a false color over the appearance of things.

Isaac Watts
Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.

Isaac Watts
When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge.

Isaac Watts
As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.

Isaac Watts
A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.

Isaac Watts