The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this-that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.
Half of science is putting forth the right questions.
Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.
Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue.
Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man.
More dangers have deceived men than forced them.
If money be not thy 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.
The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness.
A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.
The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.
Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.
Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.