Life & Death Sayings

The greatest evil is not to be good, but to be bad when one has the power to be good.

I have been nourished by books, and I have found in them a great deal of good as well as a great deal of evil.

In the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

He who is led by fear and does good to avoid evil, is not guided by reason.

The monads are perpetually changing, but they are never destroyed.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

I am not afraid of the darkness. Real death is preferable to a life without living.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

To be a man is to be an object of scorn to the angels, and of envy to the devils.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

My salad days, When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,

There's a remedy for all things but death.

The human race is a monotonous affair. What one does, the other does, and what one suffers, the other suffers.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

I am still the way I was in Florence: I do not think of death, nor of eating, nor of drinking.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

I have no fear of death, for I have lived.

I always fear that I shall be accused of extravagance.