[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.

When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.