"When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive."

"Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art."

"Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."

"Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune."

"The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity."

"Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish."

"True valor lies between cowardice and rashness."

"Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds."

"Fear has many eyes and can see things underground."

"Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes."

"There's no taking trout with dry breeches."

"Every man is the son of his own works."

"There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war."

"Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it."

"Virtue is the truest nobility."

"Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep."

"The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application."

"'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged."

"Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water."

"Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water."

"Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills."

"There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair."

"Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other."

"No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly."

"I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea."

"That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not."

"Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise."

"Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory."

"Man appoints, and God disappoints."

"Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other."

"The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation."

"It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow."

"There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots."

"Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched."

"It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it."

"For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences."

"Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water."

"Time ripens all things; no man is born wise."

"In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd."

"To be prepared is half the victory."

"To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope."

"Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience."

"Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable."

"There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it."

"I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences."

"A closed mouth catches no flies."

"A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency."

"I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar."

"He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all."

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes."