If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

We are neither obstinately nor wilfully to oppose evils, nor truckle under them for want of courage, but that we are naturally to give way to them, according to their condition and our own, we ought to grant free passage to diseases; and I find they stay less with me who let them alone. And I have lost those which are reputed the most tenacious and obstinate of their own defervescence, without any help or art, and contrary to their rules. Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Only the fools are certain and assured.