A saying of King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) on smoking, which has much modern resonance. Taken from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives :

“A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”

From Brief Lives by John Aubrey :

“At a consultation in Whitehall, after Queen Elizabeth’s death how matters were to be ordered and what ought to be done, Sir Walter Ralegh declared his opinion, ’twas the wisest way for them a group or cabal of which Ralegh was a member to keep the government in their own hands … It seems there were some in this cabal who kept not this so secret but that it came to King James’s ears; who, where the English noblesse met and received him, being told upon their presentment to his majesty their names, when Sir Walter Ralegh’s name was told ‘Ralegh’, said the King ‘On my soul, man, I have heard rawly of thee’.”

From a contemporary source, James I speaking on the King’s rule :

“I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will.”

Speaking in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, King James I (1603-1625) mused over his fate :

“Were I not a king, I would be a University man. And if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would have no other prison than this library, and be chained together with these good authors.”