"Horse-keepers and ostlers (let the world go which way it will, though there be never so much alteration in times and persons) are still stable men."
A hypocrite is odious to God, to man, and to the devil. God hates him, because he is not what he seems; man hates him, because he seems what he is not; and the devil hates him, because he seems not what he truly is.
Stage players are the most philosophical of men, because they are as content in rags as in robes.
"Roaring gallants" are like peddlers,—they carry their whole estate upon their backs.
An [oculist] is an excellent sleight-of-hand performer; because if he undertakes to cure a blind man, he will so do it that the patient shall see he does it.
He that buys a horse in Smithfield and does not look upon him before he buy him, with a pair of spectacles, makes his horse and himself a pair of sorrowful spectacles for others to look on.
Cobblers must be good men because they set men upright, and are always employed in mending soles.
A wild young gentleman desired to sell his land, and was asked the reason, to which he answered that he hoped to go to heaven, but could not possibly do so until he had forsaken earth.
A drunkard, returning home at night, found his wife hard at her spinning. She reproved him for his ill husbandry, and commended herself for her good housewifery. He replied that she had no great cause to chide, for, as she had been spinning, he came all the way home reeling.
An ignorant drunken surgeon, who killed all patients that came under his hands, boasted that he was a better man than the parson; "For," he said, "your cure maintains but yourself, but my cures maintain all the sextons in the town."