Those that lack friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.
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.
Many a man's strength is in opposition and when he faileth he groweth out of use.
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.
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth n...
God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasu...
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
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.
Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth.
Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
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.