Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.