Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life.

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.

One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

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

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.