It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

More dangers have deceived men than forced them.

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.