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.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

One of the Seven [wise men of Greece] was wont to say: That laws were like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught and the great break through.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.

There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.

Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.