“There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and of dying for it.”

Getting married is like putting one’s hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel.

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want – or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you’re better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse.

To gold and silver nature hath given no use that we may not well lack.

Take something from yourself, to give to another, that is humane and gentle and never takes away as much comfort as it brings again.

It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.

It is possible to live for the next life and still be merry in this.

It is part of the business of life to be affable and pleasing to those whom either nature, chance or circumstance has made our companions.

A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

No more like together than is chalke to coles.

An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.

It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub.

They set great store by their gardens . . . Their studie and deligence herein commeth not only of pleasure, but also of a certain strife and contention . . . concerning the trimming, husbanding, and furnishing of their gardens; everye man or his owne parte.

One man to live in pleasure and wealth, whiles all other weap and smart for it, that is the part not of a king, but of a jailor.

And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature’s lights, Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites.