To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.

We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base

A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.

One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

Satiety comes of too frequent repetition and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.