I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.