A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!