What excellent fools religion makes of men.

Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.

As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.

Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.

The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.

Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats, or winds that they be favoring and fill our sails, or meats that they be nourishing; for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us; but they know it not.

I have been at my book; and am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation