WIST Quotations

Watts, Isaac -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals … must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian and hymnodist
(Attributed)

Watts, Isaac -- Logic on the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth (1724)

Dave — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 03:36:31 +0000

If the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen or pencil the most considerable things in them which you desire to remember. Then you may read that book the second time over with half the trouble, by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noted. It is but a very weak objection against this practice to say, I shall spoil my book; for I persuade myself that you did not buy it as a bookseller, to sell again for gain, but as a scholar, to improve your mind by it; and if the mind be improved, your advantage is abundant, through your book yields less money to your executors.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian and hymnodist
Logic on the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth (1724)
(Source)

Watts, Isaac -- Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse [Reliquiæ Juveniles], ch. 32 “Earth, Heaven, and Hell” (1734)

Dave — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 20:20:12 +0000

Death, to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house, into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian and hymnodist
Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse [Reliquiæ Juveniles], ch. 32 “Earth, Heaven, and Hell” (1734)
(Source)

This phrase is often misattributed to Adam Clarke (1762-1832) (e.g., 1853, 1853, 1876, 1880, 1888) or Samuel Clarke (1727-1769) (e.g., 1827). Finding the primary source confirms Watts' authorship, though it is possible that others used the passage in sermons and writings, and the attribution was misremembered.

Watts, Isaac -- Poems, “Moral Songs: #6 Good Resolutions”

Dave — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 13:13:25 +0000

I’ll not willingly offend,
Nor be easily offended;
What’s amiss I’ll strive to mend,
And endure what can’t be mended.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian and hymnodist
Poems, “Moral Songs: #6 Good Resolutions”
(Source)

In Samuel Johnson, Works of English Poets, vol. 46 (1779)

Watts, Isaac -- The Improvement of the Mind, ch. 1 (1741)

Dave — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:55:20 +0000

A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian and hymnodist
The Improvement of the Mind, ch. 1 (1741)