Great Throughts Treasury

"Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man"

"Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."

"Silence is the virtue of fools."

"Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some to be chewed and digested."

"Studies teach not their own use; that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation."

"That law may be set down as good which is certain in meaning, just in precept, convenient in agreeable to the form of government, and of virtue in those that live under it."

"The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend."

"The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages."

"The cord breaketh at last by the weakest pull."

"The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through or holes, so you may see great axioms of small and contemptible instances."

"The folly of one man is the fortune of another; for no man prospers so suddenly as by others"

"The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man"

"The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears."

"The mind is the man, and knowledge mind; a man is but what he knoweth."

"The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come into danger by it."

"The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason: and his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit."

"The sum of behaviour is to retain a man"

"The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul."

"The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love."

"The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation."

"The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one. Nay, it is obvious that the more active and swift the latter is the further he will go astray."

"The place of justice is a hallowed place."

"There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and a flatterer."

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea."

"There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world."

"The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship."

"There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man"

"There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience."

"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel."

"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion."

"Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts."

"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set."

"When any of the four pillars of the government, religion, justice, counsel, and treasure, are mainly shaken or weakened, men have need to pray for fair weather."

"There is no worse torture than the torture of laws."

"Time is the greatest innovator. [Time is the greatest of innovators.]"

"They that deny a God destroy man"

"Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable."

"We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others that write what men do, and not what they ought to do."

"Wives are young men"