What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.

The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.

After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.

The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can.

Experience stands on its own dunghill in medicine, and reason yields it place. Medicine has always professed experience to be the touchstone of its operations.

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own.