The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.

Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

Your library is your paradise.

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

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