At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.

Poor heretics there be,Which think to establish dangerous constancy,But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,You shall be true to them, who are false to you.