It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet.

As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works.

Heaven hath many tongues to talk of it, more eyes to behold it, but few hearts that rightly affect it.

What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!

The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not.

Virtues go ever in troops; they go so thick, that sometimes some are hid in the crowd; which yet are, but appear not.

And, if I were so low that I accounted myself the worst of all, yet some would account themselves in worse case.