Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one, only in the space of two or three ages; and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through, all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of his long career.

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.

Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.

The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.