Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.

Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

No man speaketh, or should speak, of his prince, that which he hath not weighed whether it will consist with that veneration which should be preserved inviolate to him.

Slander is a complication, a comprisal and sum of all wickedness.

It consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language.

Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness.