Great Throughts Treasury

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

"Kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavors to the assuring of it at home by laws, or abroad by wars."

"Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly."

"Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others."

"Liberty, or freedom, signifieth properly the absense of opposition (by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion); and may be applied no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational.... And according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word, a freeman is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do. - Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651."

"Life is nasty, brutish, and short"

"Love is a person’s idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to."

"Man gives indifferent names to one and the same thing from the difference of their own passions; as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion."

"Man is distinguished, not only by his reason; but also by this singular passion from other animals... which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceeds the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure."

"Men are freed of their covenants two ways; by performing, or by being forgiven. For performance is the natural end of obligation, and forgiveness the restitution of liberty, as being a retransferring of that right in which the obligation consisted."

"Men condemne the same things in others, which they approve in themselves; on the other side, they publickly commend what they privately condemne; and they deliver their Opinions more by Hear-say, than any Speculation of their own; and they accord more through hatred of some object, through fear, hope, love, or some other perturbation of mind, than true Reason. And therefore it comes to passe, that whole Bodyes of people often doe those things by Generall accord, or Contention, which those Writers most willingly acknowledge to be against the Law of Nature."

"Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves."

"Men that distrust their own subtlety are, in tumult and sedition, better disposed for victory than they that suppose themselves wise. For these love to consult; the other, fearing to be circumvented, to strike first."

"Men's actions are derived from the opinions they of the good or evil, which from those actions rebound unto themselves."

"Miracles are marvelous works, but that which is marvelous to one, may not be so to another."

"Much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience. Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by sense, either all at once or by parts at several times, the former, which is the imagining the whole object as it was presented to the sense, is ‘simple’ imagination, as when one imagineth a man, or horse, which he hath seen before. The other is ‘compounded,’ as when, from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of another man, as when a man images himself a Hercules or an Alexander, which happeneth often to them that are much taken with reading of romances, it is a compound imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind. There be also other imaginations that rise in men, though waking, from the great impression made in sense; as, from gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after; and, from being long and vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark, though awake, have the images of lines and angles before his eyes; which kind of fancy hath no particular name, as being a thing that doth not commonly fall into men’s discourse."

"Money is thrown amongst many, to be enjoyed by them that catch it."

"Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joints, but so many Wheels, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, Man."

"Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he."

"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."

"No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact."

"No man can be judge to his own cause."

"No man's error becomes his own law, nor obliges him to persist in it."

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

"Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation."

"Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark. [Last words]"

"Now the science of virtue and vice, is moral philosophy; and therefore the true doctrine of the laws of nature, is the true moral philosophy."

"Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful."

"Opinion of ghosts ignorance of second causes devotion to what men fear and talking of things casual for prognostics consisteth the natural seeds of religion."

"Philosophy is a science about the reasons or about why?."

"Pleasure therefore, (or Delight,) is the appearance or sense of Good; and Molestation or Displeasure, the appearance or sense of Evil."

"Potent men digest hardly anything that setteth up a power to bridle their affections, and learned men anything that discovereth their errors and thereby lesseneth their authority. Whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependence on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority shall be imprinted in them."

"Prophecy is not an art, nor (when it is taken for prediction) a constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked."

"Prudence is but experience which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto."

"Riches joined with liberality, is Power; because it procureth friends, and servants."

"Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them."

"So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance."

"Sometimes justice cannot be had without money."

"Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome."

"Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter."

"That a man be willing when others are so too as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself."

"That we have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools."

"That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to. For men measure not only other men but all other things, by themselves; and, because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is that the schools say heavy bodies fall downwards out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation, which is more than man has, to things inanimate, absurdly."

"The aim of Punishment is not a revenge, but terror."

"The characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts."

"The condition of man in this life shall never be without inconveniences,; but there happenteth in no commonwealth any great inconvenience, but what proceeds from the subjects disobedience, and breach of those covenants from which the commonwealth hath its being."

"The condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone; in which case everyone is governed by his own reason; and there is nothing he can make use of , that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemies."

"The damage a man does to another, he may make amends for by restitution or recompense, but sin cannot be taken away by recompense, for that were to make the liberty to sin a thing vendible. But sins may be pardoned to the repentent either gratis or upon such penalty as God is pleased to accept."

"The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it in such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars, which stars do no less exercise their virtue, by which they are visible, in the day than in the night. But because amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, and other organs, receive from external bodies, the predominant only is sensible; therefore, the light of the sun being predominant, we are not affected with the action of the stars. And any object being removed from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain, yet other objects more present succeeding and working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured, and made weak, as the voice of a man is in the noise of the day. From whence it followeth that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any object, the weaker is the imagination. For the continual change of man’s body destroys in time the parts which in sense were moved; so that distance of time, and of place, hath one and the same effect in us. For as at a great distance of place that which we look at appears dim and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and inarticulate, so also after great distance of time our imagination of the past is weak; and we lose, for example, of cities we have seen many particular streets, and of actions many particular circumstances. This ‘decaying sense,’ when we would express the thing itself, I mean ‘fancy’ itself, we call ‘imagination,’ as I said before; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called ‘memory.’ So that imagination and memory are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath divers names."

"The difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend as well as he."