“Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.”

Fact be virtuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.

Eloquence, with flattery, disposeth men to confide in them that have it; because the former is seeming wisdom, the latter seeming kindness.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

The understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.

Look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow.

Men are moved by appetites and aversions.

True’ and ‘false’ are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither ‘truth’ nor ‘falsehood.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal.

I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy.

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?

In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light.

The light of humane minds is perspicuous words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity, reason is the pace.

The Power of a Man is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good.

The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.

Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, That’s a’ the learning I desire.

Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

Women naturally desire the same six things as I; they want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous with money, obedient to the wife, and lively in bed.

The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

But angels come to lead frail minds to rest in chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound. You frame my thoughts, and fashion me within; you stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak.