213 quotes
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.
Novum Organum (1620)
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Essex's Device (1595)
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (1603)
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Meditationes sacræ (1597)
He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.
I hold every man a debtor to his profession.
For knowledge itself is power.
Meditationes Sacræ [Sacred Meditations (1597)
There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.
Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
Meditationes sacræ (1597)
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
Resuscitatio (1657)
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Apophthegms (1624)
Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)