Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.

Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.

It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it.

It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation; for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.

We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.