The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth . . . and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Knowledge is power.

States, as great engines, move slowly.

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