A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.

Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

Reality and perfection are synonymous.