What is our life? A play of passion. Our mirth the music of division. Our mother's wombs the tyring houses be, Where we are drest for this short Comedy.

Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds.

I dare not think that any supercelestial heaven, or whatsoever else ... was increate and eternal. And as for the place of God before the world created, the finite wisdom of mortal men hath no perception of it; neither can it limit the seat of infinite power, no more than infinite power itself can be limited; for his place is in himself, whom no magnitude else can contain.

The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish, or remain a shame to thy name.

Men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty with more patience than the damages they sustain by injustice.

A wandering minstrel I A thing of shreds and patches Of ballads, songs and snatches And dreamy lullaby!

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.