Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection.

I would by all means have men beware, lest Æsop's pretty fable of the fly that sate [sic] on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the heaven, raises new heavens and new spheres and circles.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.