If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being a good poet without first being a good man.
Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.
You are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d , ’twill be virtue.
For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
