Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.
A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.
The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.
Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.
Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
It was a high speech of Seneca that “The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.”
Whatever you can, count.
I usually accept bribes from both sides so that tainted money can never influence my decision.
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life...
There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.
For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs.
God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.