There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here.

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.

For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs... why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?

When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.

In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.