In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

Do not wonder if the common people speak more truly than those above them: they speak more safely.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections... What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

Knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell.

Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind