“Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.”

For out of doubt In these affairs ’tis each man’s will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs Incipient motions are diffused.

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.

You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other.

All things around, convulsed with violent thunder, seem to tremble, and the mighty walls of the capacious world appear at once to have started and burst asunder.

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.

There can be no centre in infinity.

To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.

How many evils has religion caused! [Lat., Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!]

To ask for power is forcing uphill a stone which after all rolls back again from the summit and seeks in headlong haste the levels of the plain.

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.

If any man thinks to swindle God, he is wrong.

I am a child of destiny who will unite East and West and change the world.

It’s strange how so much life can be lived without speaking

If you are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt – less and less sharp and biting into you.

If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest.