There Is No Such Flatterer As Is

He That Hath Wife And Children Hath Given Hostages To Fortune, For They Are Impediments To Great Enterprises, Either Of Virtue Or Mischief. Certainly The Best Works And Of Greatest Merit For The Public Have Proceeded From The Unmarried Or Childless Men, Which Both In Affection And Means Have Married And Endowed The Public. He Was Reputed One Of The Wise Men That Made Answer To The Question, When A Man Should Marrya Young Man Not Yet, An Elder Man Not At All.

It Is By Discourse That Men Associate, And Words Are Imposed According To The Apprehension Of The Vulgar. And Therefore The Ill And Unfit Choice Of Words Wonderfully Obsesses The Understanding. Nor Do The Definitions Or Explanations Wherewith In Some Things Learned Men Are Wont To Guard And Defend Themselves, By Any Means Set The Matter Right. But Words Plainly Force And Overrule The Understanding, And Throw All Into Confusion, And Lead Men Away Into Innumerable And Inane Controversies And Fancies.

If A Man's Wit Be Not Apt To Distinguish Or Find Differences, Let Him Study The Schoolmen; For They Are Cymini Sectores, Splitters Of Hairs.

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. Doth Any Man Doubt That, If There Were Taken Out Of Men's Minds Vain Opinions, Flattering Hopes, False Valuations, Imaginations As One Would, And The Like, But It Would Leave The Minds Of A Number Of Men Poor Shrunken Things, Full Of Melancholy And Indisposition, And Unpleasing To Themselves?

To Say That A Man Lieth, Is As Much To Say, As That He Is Brave Towards God, And A Coward Towards Men.