It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

'Tis happy for him that his Father was born before him.

... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.