Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.

It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.

A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.