“Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.”

It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.

The happier the moment the shorter.

Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.

The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees.

A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer’s judgment.

On a farm the best fertilizer is the master’s eye.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.

Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.

True happiness consists in being considered deserving of it.

Wine maketh the band quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things.

Among these things, one thing seems certain – that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.

The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others.

We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.

The desire to know a thing is heightened by its gratification being deferred.

The only certainty is uncertainty

Better do nothing than do ill.