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.

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

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.