The heavens do not send good haps in handfuls; but let us pick out our good by little, and with care, from out much bad, that still our little world may know its king.

So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.

Plato found fault that the poets of his time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods, making light tales of that unspotted essence, and therefore would not have the youth depraved with such opinions.

Vice is but a nurse of agonies.

Truth is the ground of science, the centre wherein all things repose, and is the type of eternity.

Since bodily strength is but a servant to the mind, it were very barbarous and preposterous that force should be made judge over reason.

Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.