"3 miglia più in là si trova li edifici della vena del rame e dello argento, presso una terra detta Pra Santo Petro e vene di ferro e cose fantastiche. (Ancient Italian)"

"truovasi di miglio i(n) miglio bone osteriee. (Ancient Italian)"

"Subito salse in me due cose: paura e desiderio: paura per la minacciante e scura spelonca, desiderio per vedere se là entro fusse alcuna miracolosa cosa. (Ancient Italian)"

"Su per lago di Como di ver Lamagnia (Alemagna, cioè Germania) è valle di Ciavenna dove la Mera fiume mette in esso lago. Qui si truova montagni sterili e altissime chon grandi scogli ... In queste montagnie li uccielli d’acqua dette maragoni. Qui nasscie abeti, larici eppini, daini, stambuche, chamoze e teribili orsi. Non ci si pò montare se none a 4 piedi. Vannoci i villani a tempi delle nevi chon grande ingiegni per fare trabochare gli orsi giù per esse ripe. Queste montagni strette metano i(n) mezo il fiume. Sono a destra e assinistra per isspatio di miglia 20 tutti a detto modo."

"Fa vini potenti e assai, … e ‘l vino vale el più uno soldo il boccale e la libbra della vitella un soldo e ‘l sale 10 dinari, e ‘l simile il burro, ed è la loro libbra 30 once, e l’ova un soldo la soldata. (Modern Italian)"

"It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite."

"As a day well spent makes sleep seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long."

"Thou, O God, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil...."

"Look at the grace and sweetness of men and women in the street..."

"The painter strives and competes with nature...There is nothing in all nature without its reason. If you know the reason, you do not need the experience..."

"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect."

"Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener."

"Be not false about the past."

"Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly."

"The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude."

"Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom."

"It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last."

"Chi poco pensa, molto erra."

"You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself."

"The grave will fall in upon him who digs it."

"Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia."

"Ask counsel of him who rules himself well."

"We ought not to desire the impossible."

"That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired."

"He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year."

"He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss."

"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."

"That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them."

"Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being .... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that... O! wretched mortals, open your eyes."

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."

"Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them."

"It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts."

"You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand."

"Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use."

"Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in."

"The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present."

"As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death."

"The acquisition of any 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."

"Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment."

"Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present."

"Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker."

"Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us."

"To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble."

"The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind."

"O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?"