Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.

After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.

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.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.