Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 3

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Baudry's European Library, 1839
 

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Page 81 - The original of them all, is that which we call SENSE, for there is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense.
Page 98 - For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense...
Page 97 - The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly...
Page 101 - To have received from one to whom we think ourselves equal greater benefits than there is hope to requite disposeth to counterfeit love, but really secret hatred; and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him there where he might never see him more. For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom, and unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which is to one's equal, hateful.
Page 127 - ... unjustly. And whether he be of the congregation, or not ; and whether his consent be asked, or not, he must either submit to their decrees, or be left in the condition of war he was in before ; wherein he might without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever.
Page 111 - ... princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service ; which is the cause that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca's epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles.
Page 89 - ... which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books and not from their own meditation to be as much below the condition of ignorant men as men endued with true science are above it.
Page 82 - But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves ; and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain, and lassitude, think every thing else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord ; little considering, whether it be not some other motion, wherein that...
Page 93 - And therefore if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle, or accidents of bread in cheese, or immaterial substances, or of a free subject, a free will, or any free but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in an error but that his words were without meaning— that is to say, absurd.
Page 100 - For what argument of madness can there be greater than to clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends ? Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy, those by whom all their lifetime before they have been protected and secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man.

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