Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.

The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a meeting, or knot, of a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together : so are there a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

States are great engines moving slowly.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.

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

Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life.