Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

[Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind.

I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.

The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.

Reading maketh a full man.