I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

I would rather produce my passions than brood over them at my expense; they grow languid when they have vent and expression. It is better that their point should operate outwardly than be turned against us.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

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.