There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgment as doth anger

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning.

Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.