“I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Source: Immortality

A Builder's Lesson.

"In Memoriam (Easter 1915)", line 1, cited from Collected Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 173.

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 79
Variant: I was taught that I should see mine own sin, and not other men’s sin except it may be for comfort and help of my fellow-Christians.
Context: In that He shewed me that I should sin, I took it nakedly to mine own singular person, for I was none otherwise shewed at that time. But by the high, gracious comfort of our Lord that followed after, I saw that His meaning was for the general Man: that is to say, All-Man; which is sinful and shall be unto the last day. Of which Man I am a member, as I hope, by the mercy of God. For the blessed comfort that I saw, it is large enough for us all. And here was I learned that I should see mine own sin, and not other men’s sins but if it may be for comfort and help of mine even-Christians.

Prologue
The Rehearsal (1671)

Aphorism 95
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

Preface to the Elements of Architecture (1624).