If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.

Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.

He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?