The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.