Francis Bacon's Cryptic Rhymes and the Truth They Reveal

Front Cover
Siegle, Hill & Company, 1906 - 251 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 241 - Hear the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight...
Page 87 - For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 5 Thou earnest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. "In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Page 241 - There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; — Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Page 198 - 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 subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend,
Page 147 - the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired." ("Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia.") Certainly, if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), ' ' It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a god.
Page 129 - WHAT is truth ?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. 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. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those...
Page 240 - I no bays to crown it ? No flowers, no garlands gay ? All blasted ? All wasted ? Not so, my heart ; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands.
Page 136 - 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 always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride.
Page 142 - It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolours of death; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, 'Nunc dimittis' when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.
Page 11 - 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.

Bibliographic information