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.

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.

You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.

Lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways and witty reconcilements,--as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man.

The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green.

What, then, remains but that we still should cry, For being born, and, being born, to die?

They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground.