Book detail: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
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“Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences which ignorance mistakes for verifications.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Faith and works are necessary to our spiritual life as Christians, as soul and body are to our natural life as men; for faith is the soul of religion, and works the body.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“As there are some faults that have been termed faults on the right side, so there are some errors that might be denominated errors on the safe side. Thus we seldom regret having been too mild, too cautious, or too humble; but we often repent having been too violent, too precipitate, or too proud.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been well observed that we should treat futurity as an aged friend from whom we expect a rich legacy.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for 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
“As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“As we ascend in society, like those who climb a mountain, we shall find that the line of perpetual congelation commences with the higher circles; and the nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Time is the most subtle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing is permitted to take all; nor can it be satisfied until it has stolen the world from us, and us from the world. It constantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight; and although it is the present ally, it will be the future conqueror of death.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think