They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

Whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.

Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion

Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.

Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.

For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.