Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand.

All colours will agree in the dark.

Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.