The Advancement of Learning, Volume 1

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Macmillan & Company, Limited, 1898
 

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Page 27 - This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.
Page 133 - If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
Page 78 - I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.
Page 40 - Faithful are the wounds of a friend ; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Page 85 - We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason ; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.
Page 83 - STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring ; for ornament, is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned.
Page 69 - It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear...
Page 29 - ... did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning, which are extant in their books.
Page 123 - And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language ; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Page 66 - But the images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the...

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