“Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.”

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick

True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being a good poet without first being a good man.

I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.

The Devil is an Ass , I do acknowledge it.

That old bald cheater, Time.

He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.

Forbear, you things That stand upon the pinnacles of state, To boast your slippery height! when you do fall, You dash yourselves in pieces, ne’er to rise: And he that lends you pity, is not wise.

Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.

I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.

It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.

Truth is man’s proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.

If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.

[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.

For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn’t mean you’re fantastic.

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader.

The only people who have control over their careers are the ones you see on the covers of magazines.

I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.

I was attracted to photography because it was technical, full of gadgets, and I was obsessed with science. But at some point around fifteen or sixteen,

Photography was a means of crossing into a new place I didn’t know.

Whenever she uses the phrase ‘I was thinking…,’ that means I either have to move, paint or buy something.

People are like, ‘What do you mean you don’t listen to 115 different types of music?’.