Joseph Priestley - The History and Present State of Electricity (1767)

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If the exertion of human abilities, which cannot but form a delightful spectacle for the human imagination, give us pleasure, we enjoy it here in a higher degree than while we are contemplating the schemes of warriors, and the stratagems of their bloody art.

Joseph Priestley

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.

Joseph Priestley

The History of Electricity is a field full of pleasing objects, according to all the genuine and universal principles of taste, deduced from a knowledge of human nature.

Joseph Priestley

From Natural Philosophy have flowed all those great inventions by means of which mankind in general is able to subsist with more ease, and in greater numbers upon the face of the earth. Hence arise the capital advantages of men above brutes, and of civilization above barbarity.

Joseph Priestley

One of the most intimate of all associations in the human mind is that of cause and effect. They suggest one another with the utmost readiness upon all occasions; so that it is almost impossible to contemplate the one, without having some idea of, or forming some conjecture about the other.

Joseph Priestley