John of Salisbury Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

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

John of Salisbury
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.

John of Salisbury
Law is the gift of God, the model of equity, a standard of justice, a likeness of the divine will, the guardian of well-being, a bond of union and solidarity between peoples, a rule defining duties, a barrier against the vices and the destroyer thereof, a punishment of violence and all wrongdoing.

John of Salisbury
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.

John of Salisbury
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.

John of Salisbury
The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation, suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.

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

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

John of Salisbury
Reason, therefore, is a mirror in which all things are seen.

John of Salisbury
Chance blows together the atoms into an immense heap so that this very globe of the world comes into being, and so that the elements are fixed in their places under an eternal law.

John of Salisbury
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."

John of Salisbury