A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.

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.

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.

Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Nature itself cannot err