“I learned have, not to despise,
What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.”
Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet
Visions of the Worlds Vanitie (1591), line 69
“A thing seems a great marvel but then is despised.”
Tal par gran meraviglia, et poi si sprezza.
Canzone 105, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "A thing seems a great marvel but then is despised." by Francesco Petrarca?
Francesco Petrarca73
Italian scholar and poet 1304–1374Related quotes
“I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers…”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Aristotle book Parts of Animals
Book I, 645a.16
Parts of Animals
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist
Vesicles make clouds; they are trifles light as air, but then they make drops, and drops make showers, rain makes torrents and rivers, and these can alter the face of a country, and even keep the ocean to its proper fulness and use. It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great, and that under differences almost approaching the infinite, for the small as often contains the great in principle, as the great does the small; and thus the mind becomes comprehensive. It teaches to deduce principles carefully, to hold them firmly, or to suspend the judgment, to discover and obey law, and by it to be bold in applying to the greatest what we know of the smallest. It teaches us first by tutors and books, to learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science to learn for ourselves and for others; so making a fruitful return to man in the future for that which we have obtained from the men of the past.
Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403
“...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
Albert Camus book The Plague
The Plague (1947)
