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Kindle Notes & Highlights
On Flying machines (1122-1126).
Of mining. 1127.
Of Greek fire. 1128.
Of Music (1129. 1130).
Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
I. PHILOSOPHICAL MAXIMS.
Psychology (1140-1147).
1143. If any one wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul.
1144. Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
1146. Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.
1147. All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which ma...
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1155. OF MECHANICS.
1157. The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.
1158. There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.
Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.
What is life? (1162. 1163).
How to spend life (1165-1170).
1167. The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.
But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.
1171. Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
1176. Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.
1178. It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.
1179. Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.
1180. The greatest deception men suffer is from th...
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Their own delusions.
Folly is the shield of shame, as unreadiness is that of ...
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Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
Rules of Life (1188-1202).
1191. Ask counsel of him who rules himself well. Justice requires power, insight, and will; and it resembles the queen-bee. He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
He who takes the snake by the tail will presently be bitten by it.
The grave will fall in upon him ...
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You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
He who thinks little, errs much.
No counsel is more loyal than that given on ships which are in peril: He may expect loss who acts on the ad...
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Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
Be not false about the past.
Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience un...
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He who walks straight rarely falls.
1201. Words which do not satisfy the ear of the hearer weary him or vex him, and the symptoms of this you will often see in such hearers in their frequent yawns; you therefore, who speak before men whose good will you desire, when you see such an excess of fatigue, abridge your speech, or change your discourse; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you desire, you will get dislike and hostility.
III. POLEMICS.—SPECULATION. Against Speculators (1205. 1206).
Against alchemists (1207. 1208).
On spirits (1211—1213).
Reflections on Nature (1217-1219). 1217.
I. STUDIES ON THE LIFE AND HABITS OF ANIMALS.
II. FABLES. Fables on animals (1265-1270).
Fables on lifeless objects (1271—1274).
Fables on plants (1275-1279).
III. JESTS AND TALES. 1280.
IV. PROPHECIES.
