There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.

There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line ure hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the Art of God.

Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.