Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.