I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Knowledge is power.

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.

Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.