Bacon's Essays

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Crosby, Nichols, 1861 - 586 pages
 

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Page 470 - Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: Abeunt studia in mores!
Page xxvi - ... the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
Page 167 - It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an Opinion as is unworthy of him : for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely : and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose :
Page 59 - Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Page 440 - God Almighty first planted a garden ; and, indeed it is the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man ; without which buildings and palaces are but gross...
Page 285 - A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own.
Page 387 - All murder'd : for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp...
Page 13 - It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood ; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolours of death ; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, '' Nunc dimittis" when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.
Page 282 - ... whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words ; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation.
Page xxv - WHAT is truth ?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But...

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