Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so.

I have laid aside business, and gone a'fishing.

Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches, when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle that they dog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly.

I have known a very good, fisher angle diligently four or six hours for a river carp, and not have a bite.

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.

No life is so happy and so pleasant as the life of the well-govern'd angler.

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.