I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.

Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.

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.

A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.