“Hell is truth seen too late.”

“A great leap in the dark”

“Life is nasty, brutish, and short”

“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?”

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

“one who, though he never digress to read a Lecture, Moral or Political, upon his own Text, nor enter into men’s hearts, further than the Actions themselves evidently guide him…filleth his Narrations with that choice of matter, and ordereth them with that Judgement, and with such perspicuity and efficacy expresseth himself that (as Plutarch saith) he maketh his Auditor a Spectator. For he setteth his Reader in the Assemblies of the People, and in their Senates, at their debating; in the Streets, at their Seditions; and in the Field, at their Battels.Quoted by Shelby Foote in his The Civil War: A Narrative – Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian, Bibliographical Note, from Thomas Hobbes’ Forward to Hobbes’ translation of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides”

“A natureza do homem é tal que, embora sejam capazes de reconhecer em muitos outros maior inteligência, maior eloqüência ou maior saber, dificilmente acreditam que haja muitos tão sábios como eles próprios. Pois vêem sua própria sabedoria bem de perto e a dos outros homens à distância.”