To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.

Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.

The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.

Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.

Men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.