16th-century Philosopher Quotes

Francis Bacon

Thomas Hobbes

Michel de Montaigne

Hugo Grotius

Teresa of Ávila

Tommaso Campanella

Juan Luis Vives

I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.

Michel de Montaigne

As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c.

There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.

You ought to make every effort to free yourselves even from venial sin, and to do what is most perfect.

Teresa of Ávila

The ordinary ministry is that which receives all of its direction from the will of God revealed in the Scriptures and from those means which God has appointed in the church for its continual edification.

The world grows older and grows worse from generation to generation.

Alessandro Piccolomini

A state is a perfect body of free men, united together to enjoy common rights and advantages.

We begin to reason from sensible objects, and definition is the end and epilogue of science. It is not the beginning of our knowing, but only of our teaching.

Tommaso Campanella

The exercises I wholly condemn are dicing and carding, especially if you play for any great sum of money, or spend any time in them, or use to come to meetings in dicing-houses, where cheaters meet and cozen young gentlemen out of all their money.

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury

The sun is invisible in men, but visible in the world, yet both are of one and the same sun.

Wounds and hardships provoke our courage, and when our fortunes are at the lowest, our wits and minds are commonly at the best.

...The Confucian way of learning is that in order to ascend to lofty heights one must begin with the lowly, to travel afar one must begin with what is near. Indeed, to begin from the lowly and near certainly is a slow process. But apart from it, whence comes the lofty and distant? In applying one's efforts to gradual advancement one attain what is lofty and distant without parting from what is lowly and near; it is in this that it is different from Buddhist and Daoist learning.

Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie

Do not listen to vain and empty talk, in which the majority of world-loving people spend their time, and do not take pleasure in it. For the law says: 'You shall not raise false reports' (Ex. 23:1). Solomon says: 'Remove far from me vanity and lies' (Prov. 30:8). The Lord said: 'But I say to you, every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment' (Mt. 12:36).

Lorenzo Scupoli

All these books were written by idle, unoccupied, ignorant men, the slaves of vice and filth. I wonder what it is that delights us in these books unless it be that we are attracted by indecency. Learning is not to be expected from authors who never saw even a shadow of learning. As for their story-telling, what pleasure is to be derived from the things they invent, full of lies and stupidity?

Juan Luis Vives