"I find more sure marks of authenticity in the New Testament than in any profane history whatever."

"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things... He is the God of order and not of confusion."

"This law [of abstaining from blood] was ancienter than the days of Moses, being given to Noah and his sons, long before the days of Abraham: and therefore when the Apostles and Elders in the Council at Jerusalem declared that the Gentiles were not obliged to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they excepted this law of abstaining from blood, and things strangled, as being an earlier law of God, imposed not on the sons of Abraham only, but on all nations, while they lived together in Shinar under the dominion of Noah: and of the same kind is the law of abstaining from meats offered to Idols or false Gods, and from fornication."

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

"The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect."

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

"Even General Councils have erred and may err in matters of faith, and what they decree as necessary to salvation is of no strength or authority unless they can be shown to be taken from the holy Scripture."

"What cannot be understood is no object of belief."

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

[on how he made discoveries]
"By always thinking unto them. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light."