Popularity: 6
Vote:   | A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | A prudent question is one-half of wisdom. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Acorns were good until bread was found. |
Popularity: 14
Vote: | All rising to great place is by a winding stair. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | By indignities men come to dignities. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | Cure the disease and kill the patient. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Friends are thieves of time. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | God's first creature, which was light. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | He that hath knowledge spareth his words. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | If thou would'st have that stream of hard-earn'd knowledge, of Wisdom heaven-born, remain sweet running waters, thou should'st not leave it to become a stagnant pond. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior. |
Popularity: 14
Vote: | It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | It is impossible to love and to be wise. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | It is natural to die as to be born. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | It was prettily devised of Aesop, "The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise! " |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Knowledge and human power are synonymous. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Knowledge is power. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Oh! death will find me long before I tire of watching you. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Opportunity makes a thief. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Rebellions of the belly are the worst. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Science is but an image of the truth. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Silence is the virtue of fools. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | The great end of life is not knowledge but action. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | The mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The place of justice is a hallowed place. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | The remedy is worse than the disease. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding. |
Popularity: 14
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | The wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | The worst men often give the best advice. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | The worst solitude is to have no real friendships. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool. |
Popularity: 11
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying. |
Popularity: 15
Vote: | There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. |
Popularity: 16
Vote: | They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half. |
Popularity: 13
Vote: | This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Wise men make more opportunities than they find. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. |
Popularity: 12
Vote: | Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business. |