From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

It is pleasurable, when winds disturb the waves of a great sea, to gaze out from land upon the great trials of another.

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

It was certainly not by design that the particles fell into order, they did not work out what they were going to do, but because many of them by many chances struck one another in the course of infinite time and encountered every possible form and movement, that they found at last the disposition they have, and that is how the universe was created.

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.