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The remedy is worse than the disease.
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Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
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Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
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There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names - calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.
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To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affection; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.
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What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
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Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
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The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
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Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.
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Medical men do not know the drugs they use, nor their prices.
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There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
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The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.
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A man who contemplates revenge keeps his wounds green.
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Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
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The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
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Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
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The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.
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Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
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There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
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I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.
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He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.
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Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
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Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
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It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.