Never spend anything before thou have it; for borrowing is the canker and death of every man's estate.

It were better for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness; for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness.

It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.

A professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy; he will be silent on his more personal interests, or, if he must speak, will veil them under conventional forms.

Covetous ambition, thinking all too little which presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in need of that which it hath not.

According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices.

There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters, than thy inferiors.