Take special care that thou never trust any friend or servant with any matter that may endanger thine estate; for so shalt thou make thyself a bond-slave to him that thou trustest, and leave thyself always to his mercy.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

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.

In a letter to a friend the thought is often unimportant, and the feeling, if it be only a desire to entertain him, every thing.

If any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare; if he press thee further, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim.

Even such isTime, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust, Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world.