Shaftesbury

How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?

Truth, 't is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself.

Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way.

'T was the saying of an ancient sage (Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotle's "Rhetoric," lib. iii. c. 18), that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit.

I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it; as I would be clean for my own sake, although nobody were to see me.