They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.
Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.
For first of all we must prepare a Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and good; and this is the foundation of all; for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.
Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man’s than of his own.
The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.
Rather to excite your judgment briefly than to inform it tediously.
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, “Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone.”
What then remains but that we still should cry, For being born, and, being born, to die?
It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!
There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.
There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.
There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.
In all superstition wise men follow fools.
There is superstition in avoiding superstition.
There is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.
Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.
Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.
Truth is a naked and open daylight.
If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.