If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death . . . Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.

Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.