The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
Reason is the Soul of the Law.
To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.
Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.
Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.
Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.
To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.
Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.
If I had read as much as other men I would have known no more than they.
Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.
For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.
It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.
As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.
If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?
It’s not the pace of life I mind. It’s the sudden stop at the end.
For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.
Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men’s sins.