Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.