"When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge."

"A Little Learning misleadeth, and a great deal often stupifieth the Understanding."

"Money hath too great a Preference given to it by States, as well as by particular Men."

"They who are of opinion that Money will do every thing, may very well be suspected to do every thing for Money."

"If Men considered how many Things there are that Riches cannot buy, they would not be so fond of them."

"It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first."

"Men make it such a point of honour to be fit for business that they forget to examine whether business is fit for a man."

"The first mistake belonging to business is the going into it."

"The vanity of teaching often tempteth a Man to forget he is a Blockhead."

"Malice, like Lust, when it is at the Height, doth not know Shame."

"Malice is of a low Stature, but it hath very long Arms. It often reacheth into the next World, Death itself is not a Bar to it."

"Hope is generally a wrong Guide, though it is very good Company by the way. It brusheth through Hedge and Ditch till it cometh to a great Leap, and there it is apt to fall and break its Bones."

"Most men make little other use of their Speech than to give evidence against their own Understanding."

"It is Ill-manners to silence a Fool, and Cruelty to let him go on."

"In this Age, when it is said of a Man, He knows how to live , it may be imply’d he is not very honest."

"No Man is so much a Fool as not to have Wit enough sometimes to be a Knave ; nor any so cunning a Knave, as not to have the Weakness sometimes to play the Fool."

"Popularity is a Crime from the Moment it is sought ; it is only a Virtue where Men have it whether they will or no."

"There is Reason to think the most celebrated Philosophers would have been Bunglers at Business ; but the Reason is because they despised it."

"Anger is never without an Argument, but seldom with a good one."

"The best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past."

"Malice is of a low Stature, but it hath very long Arms."

"Men are not hang'd for stealing Horses, but that Horses may not be stolen."

"The best Party is but a kind of Conspiracy against the rest of the Nation. They put every body else out of their Protection. Like the Jews to the Gentiles, all others are the Offscowrings of the World."

"If the Laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the Lawyers in the first Place."

"Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, viz. by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer, if they break them."

"When the People contend for their Liberty, they seldom get any thing by their Victory but new Masters."

"Most Mens' Anger about Religion is as if two Men should quarrel for a Lady they neither of them care for."

"Men are so unwilling to displease a Prince, that it is as dangerous to inform him right, as to serve him wrong."

"Nothing is less forgiven than setting Patterns Men have no mind to follow."

"A Prince who will not undergo the Difficulty of Understanding, must undergo the Danger of Trusting."

"The People are never so perfectly backed, but that they will kick and fling if not stroked at seasonable times."

"A very great Memory often forgetteth how much Time is lost by repeating things of no Use."

"The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem."

"Love is a Passion that hath Friends in the Garrison."

"A Princely Mind will undo a private Family."

"Remember that Children and Fools want every thing because they want Wit to distinguish: and therefore there is no stronger Evidence of a Crazy Understanding, than the making too large a Catalogue of things necessary, when in truth there are so very few things that have a right to be placed in it."

"In your Clothes avoid too much Gaudy ; do not value your self upon an Imbroidered Gown ; and remember, that a reasonable Word, or an obliging Look, will gain you more respect, than all your fine Trappings."

"A Husband without Faults is a dangerous Observer."

"Every single Act either weakeneth or improveth our Credit with other Men ; and as an habit of being just to our Word will confirm, so an habit of too freely dispensing with it must necessarily destroy it."

"Our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much."

"Perfection isn’t a thing, It is a moment. A very brief moment that in time, that is lost as the world and the universe continues to move around you. If we are going to reject solutions because they aren’t perfect or come from imperfect people, then we will never move forward."

"The point of a story can penetrate far deeper than the point of any bullet."

"I have discovered motives, my own and everyone else's, to be impenetrable."

"It is human life you value isn't it? Not its worth. Just human life. As if it were gold and could be neither good nor bad nor worth more nor worth less but must always be worth the same no matter what. One human life is one human life to you. You are absurd! Like your democracy, which you imagine you got from the Greeks, who had slaves. One vote for each person. What a stupid idea! The worst in your eyes possess the same value as the best. You have no way of differentiating between them."

"'The merging of different motif areas in her drawings and the transformation of spacial relationships into flat correspondences gathers towards a distortion of depicted reality and the dissolution of its phenomenal form.' I didn't try to reach the sense of this. I understood the point of it was to transpose the locus of authority from the works to the discussion of the works. The writer had assumed the role of validating authority for the images he discussed. In order to do this he had been required to transform what he saw with his eyes into ideologies that he could 'see' with his intellect."

"Den Menschen verbessern - damit fängt aller Terror an, Religionsstifter, Totalitäre, selbstgerechte Stückeschreiber, Ideologen wollen immer den neuen Menschen, den besseren."

"Then say–how come the years to seem so swift, The days, the days so slow?"

"And I am a mockery, who was God before."

"For to love, loveless, is a bitter pill: But to be loved, unloving, bitterer still."

"O love's a simple word to say With nature aiding and abetting;"