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.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth.

It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.