Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Thomas Hobbes

Courage may be virtue, where the daring act is extreme; and extreme fear no vice, when the danger is extreme.

Desire to know how and why,—curiosity: so that man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.

The fault lieth altogether in the dogmatics, that is to say, those that are imperfectly learned, and with passion press to have their opinion pass everywhere for truth.

The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech.

Glory, or internal gloriation or triumph of the mind, is the passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power above the power of him that contendeth with us.

Every man calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good; and that evil which displeaseth him.

[This] is commonly, in the schools, called metaphysics, as being part of the philosophy of Aristotle, which hath that for title; but it is in another sense; for there it signifieth as much as “books written or placed after his natural philosophy.” But the schools take them for “books of supernatural philosophy;” for the word metaphysic will bear both these senses.

All crimes are indeed sins, but not all sins crimes. A sin may be in the thought or secret purpose of a man, of which neither a judge, nor a witness, nor any man, can take notice.

Every spontaneous action is not therefore voluntary; for voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation, that is to say, some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow.

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one’s self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him, in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill fortune that may befall him.

Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to a man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange is that passion which we commonly call admiration; and the same considered as appetite is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge.

I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour.