Society and the World

Those who become enamored of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly.

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

The knowledge of the past times and of the places of the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colors assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images.

The eye transmits its own image through the air to all the objects which face it, and also receives them on its own surface, whence the “sensus communis

Experience never misleads; what you are misled by is only your judgment, and this misleads you by anticipating results from experience of a kind that is not produced by your experiments.

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.

Oh! Speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself device.

It is a far worthier thing to read by the light of experience than to adorn oneself with the labors of others.

Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character.

The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains.

Necessity is a guardian in Nature.

That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches.

An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.

An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

To lie is vile, to tell truth is excellent, if not noble.