Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.

He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.

Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.

Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.

Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness.

He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.

Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.