A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue.

For there is a great difference in delivery of the mathematics , which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy , which is the most immersed. And howsoever contention hath been moved , touching a uniformity of method in multiformity of matter, yet we see how that opinion, besides the weakness of it, hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

Of all things known to mortals, wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.