Essays moral, economical and political

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J. Sharpe, 1819 - 196 pages
 

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Page 165 - 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, subtile ; natural philosophy, deep ; moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend...
Page 11 - It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea : a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below : but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below : so 20 always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride.
Page 89 - A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body ; and it is not much otherwise in the mind.
Page 144 - Deformed persons are commonly even with nature ; for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature; being for the most part, as the Scripture saith, " void of natural affection :" and so they have their revenge of nature.
Page 10 - Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's A minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves...
Page 38 - Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they when it were reason, but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen, that will' be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn.
Page 22 - Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour. 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 115 - PLANTATIONS are amongst ancient, primitive, and heroical works. When the world was young, it begat more children ; but now it is old, it begets fewer ; for I may justly account new plantations to be the children of former kingdoms. I like a plantation in a pure soil ; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others ; for else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation.
Page 141 - A MAN that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time ; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. : for there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages ; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.
Page 166 - Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again: if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores...

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