213 quotes
Sir Amice Pawlet, when he saw too much haste made in any matter, was wont to say. "Stay a while, that we may make an end the sooner."
Apophthegms (1624)
The world's a bubble, and the life of man
Less than a span.
The World (1629)
The divisions of the sciences are not like different lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of trees that join in one trunk.
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.
Come home to men's business and bosoms.
Essays (1625)
States are great engines moving slowly.
The remedy is worse than the disease.
Lucid intervals and happy pauses.
The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this — that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.
Novum Organum (1620)
It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627)
For a man to love again where he is loved, it is the charity of publicans contracted by mutual profit and good offices; but to love a man's enemies is one of the cunningest points of the law of Christ, and an imitation of the divine nature.
Meditationes sacræ (1597)
And he that will not apply New Remedies, must expect New Evils: for Time is the greatest Innovateur...
Essay XXIII: 'Of Innovations (1625)
Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
In civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts.
I bequeath my soul to God (…). My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.
His will (1626)
"You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" This canon is the mother of all canons against heresy; the causes of error are two; the ignorance of the will of God, and the ignorance or not sufficient consideration of his power.
Meditationes sacræ (1597)
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men.
Essays (1625)
Who then to frail mortality shall trust
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
The World (1629)
By indignities men come to dignities.
Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."
Apophthegms (1624)