There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.

... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

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