I have tried if I could reach that great resolution . . . to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.

Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.

If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.