The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
Interpretation
Nature laws guide actions but require an initiating cause to produce effects.
This quote emphasizes the distinction between laws and the agents that act upon those laws. While natural laws provide a framework for understanding the world, they do not execute actions or create results on their own; instead, a cause must engage with these laws in order to produce tangible outcomes, similar to how architectural guidelines do not construct buildings by themselves without the intervention of skilled architects and builders.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of causality and agency in scientific contexts.
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools.
Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
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