As we see Women that without the knowledge of Men do sometimes bring
forth inanimate and formless lumps of Flesh, but to cause a natural and
perfect Generation, they are to be husbanded by another kind of seed,
even so it is with Wit which if not applied to some certain study that
may fix and restrain it, runs into a thousand Extravagancies, and is
eternally roving here and there in the inextricable labyrinth of
restless Imagination.

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