The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.

Weak men are the worse for the good sense they read in books because it furnisheth them only with more matter to mistake.

There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it.

The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.

He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

Some men's memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.