It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

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

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.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.