I would advise him that is actually melancholy not to read this tract of Symptoms, lest he disquiet or make himself for a time worse, and more melancholy than he was before.
They are proud in humility, proud that they are not proud.
Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.
Seneca thinks the gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity.
Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies.
Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.
It is an old saying, “A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword”; and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrile and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-plays, or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever.
One religion is as true as another.
As a fat body is more subject to diseases, so are rich men to absurdities and fooleries, to many casualties and cross inconveniences.
A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.
A true saying it is, ‘Desire hath no rest;’ is infinite in itself, endless; and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring.
There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no greater cure than business.
We are thus bad by nature, bad by kind, but far worse by art, every man the greatest enemy unto himself.
Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.
As a Dutch host, if you come to an inn in Germnay and dislike your fare, diet, lodging, etc., replies in a surly tone, Aliud tibi quaeras diversorium, If you like not this, get you to another inn: I resolve, if you like not my writing, go read something else.
The brain, having never taken a course in philosophy, is the ultimate pragmatist; what is true is what works. Like any successful oddsmaker, the brain is a predictor of probabilities, not a stickler for the perfect answer.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.
Riches do not so much exhilarate us with their possession, as they torment us with their loss.
Look into our histories, and you shall almost meet with no other subject but what a company of hare-brains have done in their rage.
Life is governed by chance, not wisdom.