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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.
Topic: Discretion
Source: None
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The remedy is worse than the disease.
Topic: Disease
Source: Of Seditions
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Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Topic: Doubt
Source: None
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Acorns were good till bread was found.
Topic: Eating
Source: Colours of Good and Evil (6), quoted from Juvenal's "Satires" (XIV, 181)
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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile;
natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able
to contend.
Topic: Education
Source: Essays--Of Studies
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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.
Topic: Existence
Source: None
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To choose time is to save time.
Topic: Existence
Source: None
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Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him,
and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of
his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come
to him, again and again, and when the hill stood still, he was
never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to
Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
Topic: Faith
Source: Essays--Of Boldness
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Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Topic: Fame
Source: None
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If money be not they servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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We see spiders, flies or ants entombed and preserved forever in
amber, a more than royal tomb.
Topic: Flies
Source: Historia Vitoe et Mortis
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It was prettily devised of Aesop: The fly sat upon the axle-tree
of the chariot-wheel, and said, What a dust do I raise!
Topic: Flies
Source: Of Vain Glory, attributed to Aesop but found in "Fables" of Laurentius Abstemius
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We see how flies, and spiders, and the like, get a sepulchre in
amber, more durable than the monument and embalming of the body
of any king.
Topic: Flies
Source: Sylvia Sylvarum (century I, experiment 100)
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The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
Topic: Folly
Source: Of Fortune
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That conceit, elegantly expressed by the Emperor Charles V., in
his instructions to the King, his son, "that fortune hath
somewhat the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed she
is the farther off."
Topic: Fortune
Source: Advancement of Learning (bk. II)
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Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see
Fortune: for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
Topic: Fortune
Source: Essays--Of Fortune
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Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Topic: Fortune
Source: Essays--Of Fortune
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They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is
of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God
by his spirit, his is a base and ignoble creature.
Topic: God
Source: Essays--Of Atheism
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Because indeed there was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so
much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.
Topic: Goodness
Source: Essays--Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature
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Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
Topic: Goodness
Source: None
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States are great engines moving slowly.
Topic: Government
Source: Advancement of Learning (bk. II)
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So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.
[Lat., Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius
inflexum sit.]
Topic: Government
Source: De Sapientia Veterum (6, Pan, sive Natura)
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A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.
Topic: Grace
Source: None
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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Topic: History
Source: None
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Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
Topic: Humanity
Source: None
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Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Topic: Imagination
Source: None
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Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with
doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than
plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things,
integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
Topic: Judges
Source: Essays--Of Judicature
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If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.
Topic: Justice
Source: None
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For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is
an impression of pleasure in itself.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Advancement of Learning (bk. I)
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Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of
the cause frustrates the effect.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Aphorism III
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Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Rendering of I Cor. VIII (I)
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For knowledge, too, is itself a power.
[Lat., Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.]
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Treatise--De Hoeresiis
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Knowledge is power.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: None
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One of the Seven was wont to say: "That laws were like cobwebs;
where the small flies were caught, and the great brake through."
Topic: Law
Source: Apothegms (no. 181)
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All this is but a web of the wit; it can work nothing.
Topic: Law
Source: Essays on Empire
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Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost
childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then
his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly
his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
Topic: Learning
Source: Essays Civil and Moral--Of Vicissitude of Things
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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an
exact man.
Topic: Learning
Source: Essays--Of Studies
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Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient
saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or
imposture, are preserved and reposed.
Topic: Libraries
Source: Libraries
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The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man less than a span:
In his conception wretched, from the womb so to the tomb.
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years with cares and
fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Topic: Life
Source: Life--Preface to the Translation of Certain Psalms
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The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.
Topic: Literature
Source: None
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Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates...
Topic: Literature
Source: None
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I would live to study, and not study to live.
Topic: Literature
Source: None
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Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
Topic: Loneliness
Source: None
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It is impossible to love and be wise.
Topic: Love
Source: None
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He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune;
for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue
or mischief.
Topic: Matrimony
Source: Essays--Of Marriage and Single Life
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