Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.

There are many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.

Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.