Quote#Time
When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and…
Quote byFrancis Bacon · 1561–1626
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
English (original)
When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.
— Francis Bacon
More from Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. Variants: Scientia ipsa potentia est. Knowledge itself is power. Scientia potestas est. / Scientia potentia est. / Scientia est potentia. Knowledge is power.
I have taken all knowledge to be my province
Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature) and that which is properly deduced from things the interpretation of Nature.
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.