The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.

I would have every man write what he knows and no more.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.