Thomas Nashe: The Anatomie of Absurdity (1589)
One requiring Diogenes judgement when it was best time to take a wife answered: for the young man not yet and for the old man, never.

Bacon, Essay On Marriage (1624):
But yet he was reputed one of the wise man that made answer to the question when a man should marry: A young man not yet and an elder man not at all.

Nashe: The Anatomie of Absurdity (1589)
A small ship in a shallow river seems a huge thing, but in the sea a very little vessel even so each trifling pamphlet, to the simpler sort, a most substantial subject, whereof the wise lightly account and the learned laughing contempt.

Bacon Apothegms (1625)
King James was wont to be very earnest with the country gentleman to go from London to their country houses. And sometimes he would say thus to them: "Gentlemen, at London you are like ships at sea, which show like nothing, but in your country villages, you are like ships in a river, which look like great things.