If every one who hears or reads a good Sentence or maxim, would immediately consider how it does any way touch his own private concern, he would soon find, that it was not so much a good saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary Bestiality of his judgment:  but Men receive the Precepts and admonitions of Truth as generally directed to the common sort and never particularly to themselves, and instead of applying them to their own manners, do only very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to Memory, without suffering themselves to be at all instructed, or converted by them.

We say of some compositions that they stink of Oil and smell of the Lamp, by reason of a certain rough harshness that the laborious handling imprints upon those, where great force has been employed:  but besides this, the solicitude of doing well, and a certain striving and contending of a mind too far strain’d, and over-bent upon its undertaking, breaks and hinders it self, like Water that by force of its own pressing Violence and Abundance cannot find a ready issue through the neck of a Bottle, or a narrow sluice.

Humour, Temper, Education and a thousand other Circumstances create so great a difference betwixt the several Palates of Men, and their Judgments upon ingenious Composures, that nothing can be more chimerical and foolish in an Author than the Ambition of a general Reputation.

As Plants are suffocated and drown’d with too much nourishment, and Lamps with too much Oyl, so is the active part of the understanding with too much study and matter, which being embarass’d and confounded with the Diversity of things is deprived of the force and power to disingage it self; and by the Pressure of this weight, it is bow’d, subjected and rendred of no use.

* Studious and inquisitive Men commonly at forty or fifty at the most, have fixed and settled their judgments in most Points, and as it were made their last understanding, supposing they have thought, or read, or heard what can be said on all sides of things, and after that they grow positive and impatient of Contradiction, thinking it a disparagement to them to alter their Judgment.

All Skillful Masters ought to have a care not to let their Works be seen in Embryo, for all beginnings are defective, and the imagination is always prejudiced.  The remembring to have seen a thing imperfect takes from one the Liberty of thinking it pretty when it is finished.

Many fetch a tedious Compass of Words, without ever coming to the Knot of the business:  they make a thousand turnings and windings, that tire themselves and others, without ever arriving at the Point of importance.  That proceeds from the Confusion of their Understanding, which cannot clear it self.  They lose Time and Patience in what ought to be let alone, and then they have no more to bestow upon what they have omitted.

It is the Knack of Men of Wit to find out Evasions; With a touch of Gallantry they extricate themselves out of the greatest Labyrinth.  A graceful smile will make them avoid the most dangerous Quarrel.