 There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. |
| Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools. |
| Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome. |
| He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy. |
| A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous. |
| The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. |
| The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only. |
| The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind. |
| During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. |
| The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns. |
| They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion. |
| Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. |
| Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter. |
| The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living. |
| In the state of nature profit is the measure of right. |
| Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. |
| Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. |
| I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark. |
| Curiosity is the lust of the mind. |
