A companion that feasts the company with and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping. Therefore be sure you look to that, and in the next place look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to a good conscience.

And though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and turned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other will warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune: yet many will not believe there is any such thing as sympathy of souls, and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his own opinion.

Affliction is a divine diet which though it be not pleasing to mankind, yet almighty God hath often imposed it as a good, thought bitter, physic, to those children whose souls are dearest to him.

You will find angling to be like the virtue of humanity, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of blessing attending upon it.

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

And this, and many other like blessings, we enjoy daily. And for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises: but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made that sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers, and showers, and stomachs, and meat, and content, and leisure to go a-fishing.