If to break loose from the bounds of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.

In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed.

Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.

The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm.

Brutes abstract not. -- If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.