17 John of Salisbury Quotes

John of Salisbury quotes

1. Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea

2. Exquisita lectio singulorum, doctissimum; cauta electio meliorum, optimum facit.

3. Et pro virtutum habitu quilibet et liber est, et, quatenus est liber, eatenus virtutibus pollet.

4. He would be a scholar in any age, and was head and shoulders above his own.

5. He learnt to write what is regarded by competent critics as the purest Latin of the middle ages:The breadth of his reading in the Latin classics is astonishing.

1. We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

2. Between a tyrant and a prince there is this single or chief difference, that the latter obeys the law and rules the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but their servant.

3. He who will not when he may, may not when he will.

4. The common people say, that physicians are the class of people who kill other men in the most polite and courteous manner.

5. Accurate reading on a wide range of subjects makes the scholar; careful selection of the better makes the saint.

6. Verily if with mine own eyes I had seen a priest of God, or any of those who wear the monastic garb, sinning, I would spread my cloak and hide him, that he might not be seen of any.

7. Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word.

8. A man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish.

9. Among all the liberal arts, the first is logic, and specifically that part of logic which gives initial instruction about words. ... [T]he word "logic" has a broad meaning, and is not restricted exclusively to the science of argumentative reasoning. [It includes] Grammar [which] is "the science of speaking and writing correctly-the starting point of all liberal studies."

10. Seeking is a necessary preliminary to finding, and one who cannot endure the hardship of inquiry cannot expect to harvest the fruit of knowledge.

11. “The only sure road to truth is humility.”

12. Let him who is not come to logic be plagued with continuous and everlasting filth