Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.

Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Content thyself to be obscurely good.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.