Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.
The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.
Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.
He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another’s.
States, as great engines, move slowly.
It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
Wounds cannot be cured without searching.
Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.
A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
Friends are thieves of time.
Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.
If a man’s wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.
Mysteries are due to secrecy.
He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? ‘A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.’
When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.
I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, “Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.”
Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.
The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.
First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.
Nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity.