It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Nothing opens the heart like a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes...and whatever lies upon the heart.

But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.

Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

The voice of the people has about it something divine: for how otherwise can so many heads agree together as one?