Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.
The bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.
If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.
Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.
It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.
The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.
He of whom many are afraid ought himself to fear many.
Men leave their riches either to their kindred or their friends, and moderate portions prosper best in both.
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
I think of myself as a kind of pulverizing machine into which everything I look at and feel is fed. I believe that I am different from the mixed-media jackdaws who use photographs etc. more or less literally.
If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.
The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.
There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.
Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.