Bacon's Essays and Wisdom of the AncientsLittle, Brown, 1884 - 425 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Achelous actions admiration affection allegory alludes amongst ancient Arthur Gorges arts atheism Augustus Cæsar beautiful better body Cæsar called cause Certainly Cicero command commonly conceived corrupt counsel court cunning custom danger death denotes discourse divine doth Duke of Guise earth empire England envy Essays evil fable fable seems fame favor fear fortune Francis Bacon gods greatest hand hath Hippomenes honor human invented judge judgment Julius Cæsar Jupiter justice justly kind kings learning likewise Lord Bacon maketh man's matter means men's ment mind motion natural philosophy nature never noble Novum Organum observed opinion Ovid perpetual persons philosophy pleasure poets Pompey princes Prometheus Proserpine religion riches Romans saith secret servants side speak speech Tacitus things thou thought tion true truth Typhon unto usury virtue vulgar whence wherein whereof wisdom wise words
Popular passages
Page 27 - Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt. Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair. And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Page 267 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Page 58 - One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum, because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt such as we spake of before.
Page 240 - There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler ; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions, the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent.
Page 60 - Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Page 30 - For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next age.
Page 266 - 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 xiii - We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground : judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. 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 59 - ... 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 61 - ... it ; for these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.