Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.
Books speak plain when counselors blanch.
Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.
Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man’s knowledge.
Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are only good intellectual tools.
Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.
The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.
The only really interesting thing is what happens between two people in a room.
We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.
Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.