I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.