Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.

I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?

We endeavor more that men should speak of us, than how and what they speak, and it sufficeth us that our name run in men's mouths, in what manner soever. It stemma that to be known is in some sort to have life and continuance in other men's keeping.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.