A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

Habit is a second nature.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.

She [virtue] requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, ... or internal difficulties.

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.

At the very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down, whilst still entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile myself to Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by so doing less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much the better of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or counsellor than of a physician.

One may be humble out of pride.

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour.

In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place.

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.

Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"

They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, 'tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.

Like rowers, who advance backward.

There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."

Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.

Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

Saying is one thing, doing another.

A man may be humble through vainglory.

For a desperate disease a desperate cure.