"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them."

"Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."

"Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations."

"Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet— the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies."

"Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation."

"Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence."

"An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity."

"Ambition is not a vice of little people."

"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."

"A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can"

"A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband."

"I, who have so much and so universally adored this [greek], "excellent mediocrity," 32 of ancient times, and who have concluded the most moderate measure the most perfect, shall I pretend to an unreasonable and prodigious old age?"

"I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head."

"The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods."

"For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts."

"I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have."

"Amongst so many borrowed things, I am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service."

"I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together."

"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand."

"I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself."

"We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled."

"Habit is a second nature."

"A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity."

"Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general.""

"There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life."

"My appetite comes to me while eating."

"Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots."

"The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried."

"What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?"

"I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance."

"We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge."

"'T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light."

"All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me."

"And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one."

"It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out."

"Few men have been admired by their own domestics."

"I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older."

"Like rowers, who advance backward."

"The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre."

"There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity."

"Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem."

"Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?"

"Saying is one thing, doing another."

"I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice."