Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distaste; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but if it light well, it makes virtue shine and vice blush.
The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.