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.
This work delves into the principles of conciseness, offering insights into how to convey complex ideas effectively through minimal language. Aimed at those who appreciate the value of brevity, it serves as a guide to thoughtful and impactful communication.
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“We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established, and it is understood.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Shrewd and crafty politicians, when they wish to bring about an unpopular measure, must not go straight forward to work, if they do they will certainly fail; and failures to men in power, are like defeats to a general, they shake their popularity. Therefore, since they cannot sail in the teeth of the wind, they must tack, and ultimately gain their object, by appearing at times to be departing from it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“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
“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
“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
“Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“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
“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