Slavery holds few men fast; the greater number hold fast their slavery.

What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper.

The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.

Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?

Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.