The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed,... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.