We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.
Truly it is reasonable to make a great distinction between the faults that come from our weakness and those that come from our wickedness.
In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.
Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.
The most universal quality is diversity.
I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.
The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is.
There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.
The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.
And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people’s flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.
I must use these great men’s virtues as a cloak for my weakness.
We are born to inquire into truth; it belongs to a greater to possess it.
It is equally pointless to weep because we won’t be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.
I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.
Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.
No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.
The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.