Bacon: His Writings, and His Philosophy, Volume 1

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C. Knight & Company, 1846
 

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Page 54 - Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are sui amantes sine rivali, are many times unfortunate.
Page 72 - 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 handiworks.
Page 65 - The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.
Page 28 - 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.
Page 78 - 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 need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Page 36 - ... in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause; but when a man passeth on...
Page 38 - Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed ; for Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue.
Page 50 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion...
Page 59 - So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.
Page 50 - ... but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity : nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion : that is, the school of Leucippus, and Democritus, and Epicurus, for it is a thousand times more credible that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced...

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