An Instance Of The Fingerpost Quotes

The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind." (Marco)

He who profits by villainy, has perpetrated it.

In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn.

I have a theory that too much learning unbalances the mind.

The simple fact that something has not been done, is no proof that it cannot be.

Who you are is less important than what you seem.

And a more foolish notion can scarcely be imagined, it being obvious that the reader is only informed of what the writer wishes him to know, and is thus seduced into believing almost anything.

God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think;

Emotions are but the tricks of the devil, sent to tempt us into doubt and hesitation, and obscure the deeds committed, whether good or ill.

I believe firmly... that science can never contradict true religion, and that if they seem at variance, then that is due to our faulty understanding of one or the other. God gave us the Bible and he gave us nature to show his creation; it is absurd to think he might contradict himself. It is man who fails.

It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn.

It was, for the time being, an empty threat, and he must have sensed it also, for he laughed easily and with contempt. “You will do what your masters tell you to do, doctor. As do we all.

Shame, I do believe, is the most powerful emotion known to man; most discoveries and journeys of importance have been accomplished because of the ignominy that would be the result if the attempt was abandoned.

I had never before spent a night with a woman, had someone lying by my side in the quietness of the dark, hearing her breath and feeling her warmth beside me. It is a sin, and it is a crime. I say it frankly, for I have been taught so all my life, and only madmen have said otherwise. The Bible says it, the fathers of the church have said it, the prelates now repeat it without end, and all the statues of the land prescribe punishment for what we did that night. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. It must be so, for the Bible speaks only God’s truth. I sinned against the law, against God’s word reported, I abused my family and exposed them even more to risk of public shame, I again risked permanent exclusion from those rooms and books which were my delight and my whole occupation; yet in all the years that have passed since I have regretted only one thing: that it was but a passing moment, never repeated, for I have never been closer to God, nor felt His love and goodness more.

My Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence, and finds them all flawed. None conveys certainty, he decides, a conclusion which (one might think) would be devastating for scientists and lawyers alike: historians and theologians have learned to live with this, the former modestly tempering their claims, the latter resting their glorious edifice on the more reliable foundations of revelation. For without certainty what is science except glorified guesswork? And without the conviction of certainty, total and absolute, how can we ever hang anyone with an easy conscience? Witnesses can lie and, as I know myself, even an innocent can confess a crime he did not commit. But Lord Bacon did not despair, and claimed one instance of a fingerpost which points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility. The perfectly independent eyewitness, who has nothing to gain from his revelation, who is, in addition, schooled in observation and report through a gentlemanly status and education, this is the nearest we can get to a reliable witness and his testimony may be said to be conclusive, overwhelming all lesser forms.

When an experiment was to begin, all women were excluded for fear their irrational natures would influence the result, and an air of fervent concentration descended.

Although of course I am aware that it changes colour in a jar. But we know why, surely? The heavier melancholic elements in the blood sink, making the top lighter and the bottom darker." "Not so," I said firmly. "Cover the jar, and the colour does not change. And I can find no explanation of how such separation could occur in the lungs. But when it emerges from the lungs - at least, this is the case in cats - it is very much lighter in colour than when it goes in, indicating that some darkness is withdrawn from it." "I must cut up a cat and see for myself. A live cat, was it?" "It was for a while.

Mr. Milton set out in his great poem to justify the ways of God to men, as he says. He has not considered one question, however: perhaps God has forbidden men to know His ways, for if they did know the full extent of His goodness, and the magnitude of our rejection of it, they would be so disheartened they would abandon all hope of redemption, and die of grief. I

We had become inured to the most horrendous of sins, and thought of them as instruments of policy.

There is now nothing which more brings home to me the passage of the years than to meet a grown man who does not recall, as his strongest memory, the horror that the news produced

I know that the sun exists because I can see it; I believe that the earth goes around it because logical calculation concludes that, and it is not contradicted by what I can see. I know that unicorns exist because such a creature is possible in nature and reliable people have seen one, even though I have not myself

what I did, not what I felt on the matter: the transience of emotions makes them a sorry waste of time. In the history of man, it is glorious action which provides all matter of significance, and all lessons for posterity. Do

An in experienced traveler would imagine that their land contains the finest buildings, the biggest towns, the richest, best-fed, happiest people in the world.

The world was full of such madmen in those days. Imprisonment is not the way to deal with such people; half measures merely feed their pride. Leave ’em alone or hang ’em, in my opinion. Or better still, pack them off to the Americas, and let them starve.

men had turned their minds to the passion of faction, and learned to despise the old wisdom because they could not read it afresh.