To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.

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

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

The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.