A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.

Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.

All painting is an accident. But it's also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve.