“Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.”

Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews.

Griefs assured are felt before they come.

Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.

War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.

He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.

Secret guilt is by silence revealed.

Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.

I’m a little wounded, but I am not slain; I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I’ll rise and fight again.

They that possess the prince possess the laws.

None, none descends into himself, to find The secret imperfections of his mind: But every one is eagle-ey’d to see Another’s faults, and his deformity.

Our souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.

Merit challenges envy.

Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.

For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.

Body language shows everything.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes. I mean the universe, but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written.