Our Vices and Virtues couple with one another, and get Children that resemble both their Parents.
If a Man can hardly inquire into a Thing he undervalueth, how can a Man of good Sense take pains to understand the World?
To understand the World, and to like it, are two things not easily to be reconciled.
That which is called an Able Man is a great Over-valuer of the World, and all that belongeth to it.
All that can be said of him is, that he maketh the best of the General Mistake.
It is the Fools and the Knaves that make the Wheels of the World turn. They are the World; those few who have Sense or Honesty sneak up and down single, but never go in Herds.
To be too much troubled is a worse way of over-valuing the World than the being too much pleased.
A Man that steps aside from the World, and hath leisure to observe it without Interest or Design, thinks all Mankind as mad as they think him, for not agreeing with them in their Mistakes.
Of Ambition.
The serious Folly of wise Men in over-valuing the World, is as contemptible as any thing they think fit to censure.