A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.

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.

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.