Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain, the enjoying of something I am in great trouble for till I have it.

The Hall was the place where the great lord used to eat . . . He ate not in private, except in time of sickness . . . Nay, the king himself used to eat in the Hall, and his lords sat with him, and he understood men.

Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.

Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.

A wise man should never resolve upon anything, at least, never let the world know his resolution, for if he cannot reach that he is ashamed.

We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn; whereas , if we take it all together, and considered what went before and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing.

Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another lashed, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.