The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

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.

Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.