Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people`s plates.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.