Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according to custom

It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one.

Virtue is like a rich stone, – best plain set.

In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world; as to say, “”The world says,”” or “”There is a speech...

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.

the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half

What then remains but that we still should cry for being born, and, being born, to die?

I would live to study, and not study to live.

Fortune his like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, yet to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

The world’s a bubble; and the life of man,/ Less than a span.

The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it far surpasseth all other in nature

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds

There are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges

Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

He said it, that knew it best.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other

In civil business; what first? Boldness; what second, and third? Boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy...

The four pillars of government . . . (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure).

Poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind.

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of...

Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, “”It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be

Age will not be defied.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

The surest way to prevent seditions…is to take away the matter of them.

Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.

All colors will agree in the dark.

Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority

It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint

To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.

The world ‘s a bubble, and the life of man less than a span.

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against...

Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature; but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted, it will be as it were an ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily...

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and...

A man is but what he knoweth.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.