In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law.

Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.

But nature flies from the infinite; for the infinite is imperfect, and nature always seeks an end.

The law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not permit it forbids.

All men desire by nature to know.

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.