I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.