The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.

Speech was given to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.

He that tears away a man's good name tears his flesh from his bones, and, by letting him live, gives him only a cruel opportunity of feeling his misery, of burying his better part, and surviving himself.

Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.

That in all these worldly Things, that a Man pursues with the greatest Eagerness and Intention of Mind imaginable, he finds not half the Pleasure in the actual Possession of them, that he proposed to himself in the Expectation.

An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.