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 not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

I walk firmer and more secure uphill than down.