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| A proverb is much matter decocted into few words. | 1 |
| An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with. | 2 |
| Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. | 3 |
| Beard was never the true standard of brains. | 4 |
| Clothes are for necessity; warm clothes, for health; cleanly, for decency; lasting, for thrift; and rich, for magnificence. | 5 |
| Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire. | 6 |
| Curiosity is the kernel of the forbidden fruit. | 7 |
| Esteem a man of many words and many lies much alike. | 8 |
| Ethics makes man’s soul mannerly and wise, but logic is the armoury of reason, furnished with all offensive and defensive weapons. | 9 |
| Fame may be compared to a scold; the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet. | 10 |
| Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing. | 11 |
| Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience drives it. | 12 |
| Frost is God’s plough. | 13 |
| Generosity, wrong placed, becomes a vice. A princely mind will undo a private family. | 14 |
| Good counsels observed are chains to grace. | 15 |
| Gravity is the ballast of the soul, which keeps the mind steady. | 16 |
| Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the noise is heard, so that it maketh a noise not by way of warning, but of triumph. | 17 |
| Haste and rashness are storms and tempests, breaking and wrecking business; but nimbleness is a full, fair wind, blowing it with speed to the haven. | 18 |
| He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows. | 19 |
| He that falls into sin, is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil; yet some glory in that shame, counting the stains of sin the best complexion of their souls. | 20 |
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| He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain. | 21 |
| If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; If a servant, sometimes deaf. | 22 |
| Learn to hold thy tongue. Five words cost Zecharias forty weeks’ silence. | 23 |
| Learning hath gained most by those books by which printers have lost. | 24 |
| Many hope that the tree may be felled who expect to gather chips by the fall. | 25 |
| Memory is like a purse: if it be over-full, that it cannot be shut, all will drop out of it. | 26 |
| Music is but wild sounds civilised into time and tune. | 27 |
| Often the cock-loft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many storeys high. | 28 |
| Parents are commonly more careful to bestow wit on their children than virtue, the art of speaking well than of doing well; but their manners ought to be the great concern. | 29 |
| Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound; both excellent sauce, but they have lived and died poor that made them their meal. | 30 |
| Rashness is the faithful but unhappy parent of misfortune. | 31 |
| Real worth floats not with people’s fancies, no more than a rock in the sea rises and falls with the tide. | 32 |
| Reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best light. | 33 |
| Remember Atlas was weary. | 34 |
| Search others for their virtues, and thyself for thy vices. | 35 |
| Silver from the living / Is gold in the giving: / Gold from the dying / Is but silver a-flying. / Gold and silver from the dead / Turn too often into lead. | 36 |
| Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise. | 37 |
| Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation, for sleep itself is a recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauce. | 38 |
| The beams of joy are made hotter by reflection. | 39 |
| The blush is Nature’s alarm at the approach of sin, and her testimony to the dignity of virtue. | 40 |
| The frost is God’s plough, which he drives through every inch of ground, opening each clod and pulverising the whole. | 41 |
| The greatest man living may stand in need of the meanest as much as the meanest does of him. | 42 |
| The image of God cut in ebony—i.e., the negro. | 43 |
| The lion is not so fierce as painted. | 44 |
| The press beginneth to be an oppression of the land. | 45 |
| The pyramids, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders. | 46 |
| There are heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit, sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room. | 47 |
| There is a Spanish proverb that a lapidary who would grow rich must buy of those who go to be executed, as not caring how cheap they sell; and sell to those who go to be married, as not caring how dear they buy. | 48 |
| They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter. | 49 |
| They who play with the devil’s rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword. | 50 |
| Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. | 51 |
| Thou mayest be more prodigal of praise when thou writest a letter than when thou speakest in presence. | 52 |
| Tombs are the clothes of the dead—a grave but a plain suit, and a rich monument one embroidered. | 53 |
| Trust not in him that seems a saint. | 54 |
| Wanton jests make fools laugh and wise men frown. | 55 |
| When a pepin is planted on a pepin-stock, the fruit growing thence is called a renate, a most delicious apple, as both by sire and dame well descended. Thus his blood must needs be well purified who is gentilely born on both sides. | 56 |
| When thou makest presents, let them be of such things as will last long; to the end they may be in some sort immortal, and may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver. | 57 |
| When worthy men fall out, only one of them may be faulty at the first; but if strife continue long, commonly both become guilty. | 58 |
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