Velazquez found the perfect balance between the ideal illustration which he was required to produce, and the overwhelming emotion he aroused in the spectator.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

...to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know

Wounds cannot be cured without searching.

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