It is plain there is not in nature a point of stability to be found; everything either ascends or declines; when wars are ended abroad, sedition begins at home; and when men are freed from fighting for necessity, they quarrel through ambition.
Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men’s praises is most perilous.
Flatterers are the worst kind of traitors, for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint thy follies and vices as thou shalt never, by their will, discover good from evil, or vice from virtue.
Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during, glory and termless joy.
If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year.
Death, which hateth and destroyeth a man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred.
There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being.
The most divine light only shineth on those minds which are purged from all worldly dross and human uncleanliness.
Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.
God is absolutely good; and so, assuredly, the cause of all that is good.
Better it were not to live than to live a coward.
Corrupt seeds bring forth corrupt plants.
The useful type of successful teacher is one whose main interest is the children, not the subject.
To live thy better, let thy worst thoughts die.
Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.
All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.
But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.
Men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty with more patience than the damages they sustain by injustice.
I can’t write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me.
There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation; the earth, heavens, and whole world is thereunto subject.