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.

There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being.

But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.

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.

All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

The gain of lying is nothing else but not to be trusted of any, nor to be believed when we say the truth.

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