There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death . . . Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.

It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.

the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.