At the time the book of Marquis de l'Hôpital had appeared, and almost all mathematicians began to turn to the new geometry of the infinite [that is, … - Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style. For this made no impression upon the Philosophers; who, to turn this answer into ridicule, compared it to the Story of a Painter, who being hired to draw the Picture of a Horse tumbling on his Back upon the ground, drew one running full speed: and when he was told, that this was not such a Picture as was bespoke, he turned it upside down, and then ask'd if the Horse did not tumble upon his back now. Thus these Philosophers jeered such Persons, who by a way of arguing that would serve both ways, could equally prove that the Verses were made by a God, whether they were good or bad.

Men are not willing to suffer the decision of things to be too easie, and therefore they mingle their own prejudices with truths, and so create greater perplexities than are Naturally found therein; and those scruples, which our selves frame, give us the most pain to untangle.

It is more reasonable to remove error from truth, than to venerate error because it is mix'd with truth.