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The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.

Thomas Paine

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Thomas Paine
Age: 72 †
Born: 1737
Born: January 29
Died: 1809
Died: June 8
Author
Entrepreneur
Journalist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Prosaist
Writer
Thetford
Norfolk
Idea
Greatly
Stories
Marvelous
Jonah
Ideas
Borders
Whale
Enough
Miracle
Swallowing
Would
Large
Swallowed
Though
Approached
Story
Whales
Religion
Nearer

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The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.
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Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
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Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
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It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
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The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
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Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.
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Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.
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The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
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Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
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It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
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Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.
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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
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But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
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The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
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In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experiences as we go.
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Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.
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And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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