Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

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.