“Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places - at the foot of the cross, and in the grave.”
“We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.”
Source: L.P.
“Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think
“The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Gold is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Address--to Those who Think
“Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Address--to Those who Think
“Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”
“Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There is this difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflec.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.”
Source: L.P.
“Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.”
“It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.”
Source: L.P.
“Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.”
“He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.”
“Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.”
“No two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is laboring eternally, but to no purpose, and is in constant motion without getting on a job; like a turnstile, he is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are, he only burns his fingers.”
“Habit will reconcile us to everything but change”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility”
“The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.”
“Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.”
“It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.”
“It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.”
“"Lawyers Are": The only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from (amongst) themselves.”
“Sometimes the greatest adversities turn out to be the greatest blessings.”
