I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.

It's not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.