Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.
— George Savile
There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it.
The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.
Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.
Our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much.
The best Qualification of a Prophet is to have a good Memory.
Many men swallow the being cheated, but no man can ever endure to chew it.
He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.
When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.
A princely mind will undo a private family.
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.
They who are of the opinion that Money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for Money.
Nothing would more contribute to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.
The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead.
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.
If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.
A prince who will not undergo the difficulty of understanding must undergo the danger of trusting.
Love is a passion that hath friends in the garrison.
Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.
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.
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.
A man man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner.
A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is good company along the way.
Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.
Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side.
Some men's memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.
A husband without faults is a dangerous observer.
