Truth is a good dog but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
Age appears to be best in four things old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.
Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Friends are thieves of time.
Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Acorns were good until bread was found.
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education in the elder, a part of experience.
The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
God's first creature, which was light.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.
Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
By indignities men come to dignities.