f a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own economy.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the
course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.

Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they trust for
the disposal of places: I have known a prince, more than once, choose an
able Minister, but I never observed that Minister to use his credit in
the disposal of an employment to a person whom he thought the fittest for
it. One of the greatest in this age owned and excused the matter from
the violence of parties and the unreasonableness of friends.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones are not
in the way. For want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old
men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too
apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of
themselves; in women from the contrary.

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years
past, I am in some concern for future ages how any man will be learned,
or any man a lawyer.

Kings are commonly said to have _long hands_; I wish they had as _long
ears_.

Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover
prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish.
Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful kings! If they
happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue.
If they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but
corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good
ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. Both were
originally the same trade, and still continue.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long
beards, and pretences to foretell events.

A person was asked at court, what he thought of an ambassador and his
train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes, and
gestures; he said, it was Solomon's importation, gold and apes.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, is an
im