I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.