Quotes from John Arbuthnot

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

Law is a Bottomless-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing.

I believe the calculation of the quantity of probability might be improved to a very useful and pleasant speculation, and applied to a great many events which are accidental, besides those of games; only these cases would be infinitely more confused, as depending on chances which the most part of men are ignorant of.

What if the greatest part of the pack have run upon a false scent, may not the hindmost dog hit it off?

The dumpling-eaters are a race sprung partly from the old Epicurean and partly from the Peripatetic Sect; they were first brought into Britain by Julius Caesar; and finding it a Land of Plenty, they wisely resolved never to go home again.

All the politics in the world are nothing else but a kind of analysis of the quantity of probability in casual events, and a good politician signifies no more but one who is dexterous at such calculations.

Am I th'abandon'd orphan of blind chance; Dropt by wild atoms in disorder'd dance? Or from an endless chain of causes wrought? And of unthinking substance, born with thought?

Truth is the same thing to the understanding, as Music to the ear, and Beauty to the eye.

O truth divine! enlightened by thy ray, I grope and guess no more, but see my way.

Truth can never be an enemy to true religion, which appears always to the best advantage when it is most examined.

Biography is one of the new terrors of death.

Mathematical studies may serve for a pleasant entertainment for those hours which young men are apt to throw away upon their vices.