
The English Renaissance of Art https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wilde/oscar/english-renaissance-of-art/ (1882)
"A Trinity"
Hilaire Belloc (1925)
The English Renaissance of Art https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wilde/oscar/english-renaissance-of-art/ (1882)
As quoted in The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) by John Cook.
Aphorism 129
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.