1650s

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 9.6

Thomas Fuller (churchman)

1650

★ 8.8

Curiosity...is a Lust of the mind.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 8.0

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.

There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 7.1

Poem

Henry Vaughan

Silex Scintillans · 1655

★ 5.3

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

Things are always at their best in their beginning.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 4.6

Blaise Pascal

1656

★ 4.6

Religious literature

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Thomas Fuller (churchman)

A Comment on Ruth: And Notes Upon Jonah · 1654

★ 4.5

Riches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 4.0

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

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.9

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.8

Religion; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

Necessity hath no law.

Oliver Cromwell

1654

★ 3.7

The end justifies the means.

Hermann Busenbaum

1650

★ 3.6

Poem

Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all.

Henry Wotton

The Character of a Happy Life · 1651

★ 3.6

We may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did."

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 3.6

No man can lose what he never had.

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 3.6

Sir Thomas Browne

1658

★ 3.6

No man ever repented that he arose from the table sober, healthful, and with his wits about him.

Jeremy Taylor

The House of Feasting · 1653

★ 3.5

They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for they have no souls.

Edward Coke

1658

★ 3.5

Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.

Sir Thomas Browne

Hydriotaphia · 1658

★ 3.5

Play · Comedy (play) · Comedy

We only die once, and for such a long time!

Moliere

1656

★ 2.9

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 2.3

The papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 2.2

True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 2.2

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

Life is an incurable disease.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

Poem

Abraham Cowley

1656

★ 1.9

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

Were the happinesse of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

Sir Thomas Browne

1658

★ 1.9

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition, and mutual envy of the living.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 1.3

I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.1

You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings attending upon it.