More dangers have deceived men than forced them.

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.

Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.

I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime.

Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections... What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.