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| A monarchy is apt to fall by tyranny; an aristocracy, by ambition; a democracy, by tumults. | 1 |
| Anger, when it is long in coming, is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. | 2 |
| As there is no worldly gain without some loss, so there is no worldly loss without some gain. | 3 |
| Be wisely worldly; be not worldly wise. | 4 |
| But wouldst thou know what’s heaven? I’ll tell thee what: / Think what thou canst not think, and heaven is that. | 5 |
| Convey thy love to thy friend as an arrow to the mark; not as a ball against the wall, to rebound back again. | 6 |
| Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. | 7 |
| Enough requires too much; too much craves more. | 8 |
| Falls have their risings, wanings have their primes, / And desperate sorrows wait for better times. | 9 |
| Fear not where Heaven bids come; / Heaven’s never deaf but when man’s heart is dumb. | 10 |
| God is alpha and omega in the great world; endeavour to make Him so in the little world. | 11 |
| Gold is Cæsar’s treasure, man is God’s; thy gold hath Cæsar’s image, and thou hast God’s. | 12 |
| Hath fortune dealt thee ill cards? Let wisdom make thee a good gamester. | 13 |
| He is below himself who is not above an injury. | 14 |
| He never yet stood sure that stands secure. | 15 |
| He that hath but gained the title of a jester, let him assure himself the fool is not far off. | 16 |
| Heav’n finds an ear when sinners find a tongue. | 17 |
| Heav’n is not always got by running. | 18 |
| Heav’n is not day’d. Repentance is not dated. | 19 |
| Heaven is never deaf but when man’s heart is dumb. | 20 |
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| Heaven’s fire confounds when fann’d with folly’s breath. | 21 |
| Hid jewels are but lost. | 22 |
| Hold up thy head; the taper lifted high / Will brook the wind when lower tapers die. | 23 |
| If thou deniest to a laborious man and a deserving, thou killest a bee; if thou givest to other than such, thou preservest a drone. | 24 |
| In a fair gale every fool may sail, but wise behaviour in a storm commends the wisdom of the pilot. | 25 |
| It is but vain to waste honey on those that will be caught with gall. | 26 |
| Judge not the play before the play is done; / Her plot has many changes; every day / Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play. | 27 |
| Know, fools only trade by the eye. | 28 |
| Knowledge descries alone, wisdom applies: / That makes some fools, this maketh none but wise. | 29 |
| Knowledge, when wisdom is too weak to guide her, / Is like a headstrong horse that throws the rider. | 30 |
| Let those have night that love the night. | 31 |
| Life lies most open in a closed eye. | 32 |
| Make clean thy conscience; hide thee there. | 33 |
| Meditation is the life of the soul; action, the soul of meditation; honour, the reward of action. | 34 |
| Mercy turns her back to the unmerciful. | 35 |
| My soul, what’s lighter than a feather? Wind. / Than wind? The fire. And what than fire? The mind. / What’s lighter than the mind? A thought. Than thought? / This bubble world. What than this bubble? Nought. | 36 |
| No cross, no crown. | 37 |
| Of more than earth can earth make none possesst; / And he that least / Regards this restless world, shall in this world find rest. | 38 |
| Physicians, of all men, are most happy; whatever good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth; and what faults they commit, the earth covereth. | 39 |
| Prayer is the cable, at whose end appears / The anchor hope, ne’er slipp’d but in our fears. | 40 |
| Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself; if thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend rather than the gloss of a sweet-lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than deceitful sweetness. | 41 |
| Scandal breeds hatred, hatred begets divisions, division makes faction, and faction brings ruin. | 42 |
| Slave to silver’s but a slave to smoke. | 43 |
| That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving. | 44 |
| The fairest tulip’s not the sweetest flower. | 45 |
| The fruit that’s yellow / Is found not always mellow. | 46 |
| The greater height sends down the deeper fall: / And good declin’d turns bad, turns worst of all. | 47 |
| The ill that’s wisely feared is half withstood, / And fear of bad is the best foil to good. | 48 |
| The last act crowns the play. | 49 |
| The popular ear weighs what you are, not what you were. | 50 |
| The righteous man falls oft, / Yet falls but soft; / There may be dirt to mire him, but no stones / To crush his bones. | 51 |
| The road to resolution lies by doubt. | 52 |
| The way’s not easy where the prize is great. | 53 |
| The world’s a sea. | 54 |
| There is no loss / In being small; great bulks but swell with dross. / Man is heaven’s masterpiece; if it appear / More great, the value’s less; if less, more dear. | 55 |
| There’s none that can / Read God aright, unless he first spell man. | 56 |
| Thou art Heaven’s tasker; and thy God requires / The purest of thy flour, as well as of thy fires. | 57 |
| True love will creep, not having strength to go. | 58 |
| Trust not this hollow world; she’s empty; hark, she sounds. | 59 |
| Understanding is the wages of a lively faith, and faith is the reward of a humble ignorance. | 60 |
| We gape, we grasp, we gripe, add store to store; / Enough requires too much; too much craves more. | 61 |
| What bitter pills, / Compos’d of real ills, / Men swallow down to purchase one false good. | 62 |
| When ambitious men find an open passage, they are rather busy than dangerous; and if well watched in their proceedings, they will catch themselves in their own snare, and prepare a way for their own destruction. | 63 |
| When Peter’s cock begins to crow, ’tis day. | 64 |
| Where lies are easily admitted, the father of lies will not easily be excluded. | 65 |
| Which is the lightest in the scale of Fate? / That where fond Cupid still is adding weight. | 66 |
| Whining lover may as well request / A scornful breast / To melt in gentle tears, as woo the world for rest. | 67 |
| Wickedness is its own punishment. | 68 |
| Wisdom not only gets, but, got, retains. | 69 |
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