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

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.

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this-that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.

It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.