“Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.”
His famous response to his judges upon his conviction as a heretic, prior to his transfer to the civil authorities for execution. (16 February 1600); as quoted by Gaspar Schopp of Breslau in a letter to Conrad Rittershausen; as translated in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno00.htm
Variant translations:
Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it.
It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.
You pronounce sentence upon me with greater fear than I receive it.
Original
Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Giordano Bruno 62
Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer 1548–1600Related quotes
Variant: I love you, I thought. But I didn’t say it. It was not that I feared she would laugh in my face. She was far too kind for that. My fear was a greater one— that she won’t say it back.
Source: Beastly
VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
“A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.”
Source: Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties
In his Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: 1855)
“Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.”
Sono maggiori li spaventi ch'e mali.
Act III, scene xi
The Mandrake (1524)
