If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.

He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.

We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art

The human bird shall take his first flight,filling the words with amazement,all writings with his fame,and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.