OF TRUTH
“Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure… But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.”
OF SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION
“The best composition and temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.”
OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE
“It is often seen that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their husband’s kindness when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing against their friends’ consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.”
OF LOVE
“There is in man’s nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it.”
OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES
“Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”
OF TRAVEL
“It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.”
OF EMPIRE
“It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear: and yet that commonly is the case of kings… We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first years … turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy… For he that is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favour, and is not the thing he was… And certain it is that nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.”
OF THE TRUE GREATNESS OF KINGDOMS AND ESTATES
“There is not anything amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgement concerning the power and forces of an estate… Let states that aim at greatness, take heed how their nobility and gentlemen do multiply too fast… For to think that an handful of people can, with the greatest courage and policy in the world, embrace too large extent of dominion, it may hold for a time, but it will fail suddenly… It was not the Romans that spread upon the world, but it was the world that spread upon the Romans; and that was the sure way of greatness.”
OF PLANTATIONS [COLONIES]
“I like a plantation in a pure soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others. For else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation.”
OF MASQUES AND TRIUMPHS
“Since princes will have such things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost.”
OF STUDIES
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested… Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.”
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