“Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.”

Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

Give an inch, he’ll take an ell.

That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Every time reason stands against the human, the human will stand against the reason.

Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.

It’s not the pace of life I mind. It’s the sudden stop at the end.

liberty, to define it, is nothing other than the absence of impediments to motion

For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I’m so far behind that I’ll never die

Where shall I turn, what shall I do?’ are the voices of people grieving. Idleness is torture. In all times and places, nature abhors a vacuum.

It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is an injustice to none of them.

A man’s conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous”

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

One thing that makes me prefer people over books is shared laughter.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

The graveyard is the richest place on the surface of the earth because there you will see the books that were not published, ideas that were not harnessed, songs that were not sung, and drama pieces that were never acted.

I love books and going to bookstores. My favorite sound is the sound of the needle hitting the record.

No one has been a greater botanist or zoologist. No one has written more books, more correctly, more methodically, from personal experience. No one has more completely changed a whole science and started a new epoch.