Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.

The opinion formulated by the Church has more value in my eyes than human reasons, whatever they may be.

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

The entire world is my temple, and a very fine one too, if I'm not mistaken, and I'll never lack priests to serve it as long as there are men.