Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation; not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings. [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure. [Lat., Et metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agundus, Funditis humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo, Omnia suffuscans mortis nigrore, neque ullam Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit.]

And since the mind is of a man one part, Which in one fixed place remains, like ears, And eyes, and every sense which pilots life; And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart, Severed from us, can neither feel nor be, But in the least of time is left to rot, Thus mind alone can never be, without The body and the man himself, which seems, As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined: Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.

Those vestiges of natures left behind Which reason cannot quite expel from us Are still so slight that naught prevents a man From living a life even worthy of the gods.

Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.

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.