The works of lord Bacon, moral and historical, with a brief memoir of the author [by S.O. Beeton].

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Ward, Lock and Company, Warwick house, 1877 - 524 pages

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Page 161 - He that hath wife and children, hath given hostages to fortune ; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men : which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.
Page 223 - To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Page 223 - ... 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 school-men, for they are Cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases ; so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.
Page 152 - It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost 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...
Page 152 - I cannot tell, this same truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candlelights. Truth may, perhaps, come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ^ever add pleasure.
Page 192 - Latin adage meeteth with it a little: "magna civitas, magna solitude ;" because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods : but we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness...
Page 153 - Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark : and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars...
Page 196 - How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth which are blushing in a man's own.
Page 292 - 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 52 - ... was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits ; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?

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