“Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.I'd rather write about laughing than crying,For laughter makes men human, and courageous.”

“Readers, friends, if you turn these pagesPut your prejudice aside,For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.Not that I sit here glowing with prideFor my book: all you'll find is laughter:That's all the glory my heart is after,Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.I'd rather write about laughing than crying,For laughter makes men human, and courageous.”

“..to laugh is proper to the man.”

“Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.”

“Do What Thou Wilt;because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.”

“Si vous faîtes attention aux signes, quand donc ferez vous attention à ce qu'ils signifient?If you pay attention to the signs, but when will you pay attention to what they signify?”

“...and also celebrate the Skill of the Scythians in that Art, who sent once to Darius King of Persia an Embassador that made him a present of a Bird, a Frog, a Mouse, and five Arrows, without speaking one word; and being ask'd what those Presents meant, and if he had Commission to say any thing, answer'd that he had not; Which puzzl'd and gravell'd Darius very much; till Gobrias, one of the seven Captains that had kil'd the Magi explain'd it, saying to Darius, By these Gifts and Offerings the Scythians silently tell you, that except the Persians like Birds fly up to Heaven, like Mice hide themselves near the Centre of the Earth, or like Frogs dive to the very bottom of Ponds and Lakes, they shall be destroyed by the Power and Arrows of the Scythians.”