“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.”

He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.

If you succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; turn it new.

In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.

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.

The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.

He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.

Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.

Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

A good poet’s made as well as born.

True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.

Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.

Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.

Poets are far rarer birds than kings.

O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!

Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.