We censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.

As sins proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that wert before it.

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.

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.

The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.