A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.
A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.
Spouses are great impediments to great enterprises.
Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.
In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.
There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.
Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no time.