For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.

States, as great engines, move slowly.

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

...those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.