If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.

A much talking judge is an ill-tuned cymbal.

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.