It was a high speech of Seneca that "The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired."
Nor is mine a trumpet which summons and excites men to cut each other to pieces with mutual contradictions, or to quarrel and fight with one another; but rather to make peace between themselves, and turning with united forces against the Nature of Things
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.
There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.
In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.
In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression.
In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.
Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature; but unskillfully and unmethodically depicted, it will be as it were an ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly