
Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Florence, in Apothegms by Francis Bacon, (1624) No. 206
Vol. 2, Ch. 26, sect. 311a
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Florence, in Apothegms by Francis Bacon, (1624) No. 206
“The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.”
Source: The Poisonwood Bible
“It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not.”
CMU Graduation speech (2008)
Context: It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I've done a lot of really stupid things, and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, and all the dopey things, and all the times I was embarrassed — they don't matter. What matters is that I can kind of look back and say: Pretty much any time I got chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it — and that's where my solace comes from.
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
1960s, The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Variant: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
“If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.”
Translations and adaptations, If We Only Have Love (1968)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.
No. 206
Apophthegms (1624)
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations http://archive.org/details/dictionaryquota02harbgoog (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 320