“Deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry.”

All life is a struggle in the dark.

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.

All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they’re set, and where they’re moved around.

It’s easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.

Under what law each thing was created, and how necessary it is for it to continue under this, and how it cannot annul the strong rules that govern its lifetime.

Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there.

There is so much wrong with the world.

What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.

No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvelous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time.

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

Nothing comes from nothing.

Tears for the mourners who are left behind Peace everlasting for the quiet dead.

There is no place in nature for extinction.

In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.

From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment.

Suffering belongs to no language.

Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.

It is responsible for smuggling explosives and drugs into Saudi Arabia.

Time is the turning over of days, works change for better or worse.

To believe that women’s contributions have been less important than men’s contributions because women are usually less public people.

Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.

Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.

For all kinds of reasons, it is more difficult to track women’s lives. Women’s words have simply been considered less important, so they have been preserved less often.