To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe.

(Death is) A leap into the dark.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

With what shift and pains we come into the World we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it.

Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.

To be content with death may be better than to desire it.

Should your riches increase, let your mind keep pace with them.