Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.

In all superstition wise men follow fools.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing'd reapers come.