itation of fighting.

Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name foretold himself good fortune.
I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is he keeps his at the
same time.

Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth when we see them so
positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal to
truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives?

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author,
where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce
him to be mistaken.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to
live another time.

Laws penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar
language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we
wonder that the Bible is so?

Although men are accused for not knowing their weakness, yet perhaps as
few know their own strength.

A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey, that was hung
on a fruit tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad to go
into that vial, where you see many hundred of your kind there dying in it
before you?" "The reproach is just," answered the wasp, "but not from
you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies,
that you will not take warning by your own. If after falling several
times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I
should then but resemble you."

An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and
hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked why he would hoard up
those round shining things that he could make no use of? "Why," said the
jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more use of them
than I."

Men are content to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their
works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they
ever had any.

After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-by
would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously contrived.

There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not support
double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one-third of
the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I
send out twenty barrels of corn, which would