For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.

I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.

If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.

Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.

A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.

A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.