The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.

There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

What else is nature but God?

You must know for which harbor you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.

Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.