“A good tale evil told were better untold, and an evil take well told need none other solicitor.”

I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power.

What is deferred is not avoided.

Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men’s hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.

The way to heaven out of all places is of length and distance.

Oh! blame not the bard.

Those among them that have not received our religion do not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion.

Most people know nothing about learning; many despise it. Dummies reject as too hard whatever is not dumb.

We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds.

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.

The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.

One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.

I should only ever tell the king what he ought to do, not what he could do. For if the lion knows his own strength, no man could control him.

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble; and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn’t control the winds.

Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.