“There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.”

Well, I see I am not designed to the finding out the Philosophers Stone, I have been so unlucky in my first attempts in chemistry.

Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due con-templation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty.

The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration.

I am not ambitious to appear a man of letters: I could be content the world should think I had scarce looked upon any other book than that of nature.

God would not have made the universe as it is unless He intended us to understand it.

Nature always looks out for the preservation of the universe.

God is the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.

He that condescended so far, and stooped so low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not refuse us a gracious reception there.

Our Saviour would love at no less rate than death; and from the supereminent height of glory, stooped and debased Himself to the sufferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk himself to the bottom of abjectness, to exalt our condition to the contrary extreme.

As the sun is best seen at his rising and setting, so men’s native dispositions are clearest seen when they are children, and when they are dying.

It is not strange to me that persons of the fair sex should like, in all things about them, the handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked.

The generality of men are so accustomed to judge of things by their senses that, because the air is indivisible, they ascribe but little to it, and think it but one remove from nothing.

He that said it was not good for man to be alone, placed the celibate amongst the inferior states of perfection.

Female beauties are as fickle in their faces as in their minds; though casualties should spare them, age brings in a necessity of decay.

Sound consists of an undulating motion of the air.

The book of nature is a fine and large piece of tapestry rolled up, which we are not able to see all at once, but must be content to wait for the discovery of its beauty, and symmetry, little by little, as it graduallly comes to be more and more unfolded, or displayed.

I’m not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there’s going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what’s going to happen.

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that’s the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.

Learning (Shakespeare’s plays) …in school was a bit of a bore.

I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I’ve stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words.

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s.