The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

Consistency is the foundation of virtue.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

The voice of the people has about it something divine: for how otherwise can so many heads agree together as one?

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.