Many other means there be, that promise the foreknowledge of things to come: besides the raising up and conjuring of ghosts departed, the conference also with familiars and spirits infernal. And all these were found out in our days, to be no better than vanities and false illusions.

The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.

Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!

How many things... are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?

No one is wise at all times.

The most valuable discoveries have found their origin in the most trivial accidents.

I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness.