Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

The power of a man, to take it universally, is his present means, to obtain some future apparent good; and is either original or instrumental.

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

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.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

No man’s error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short

A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.

I am about to take my last voyage. A great leap in the dark.

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that...

Desire to know why, and how — curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge — exceedeth the short vehemence of any...