Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

Nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

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

By indignities men come to dignities.

All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man.

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