Philosophical works

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Henry G. Bohn, 1854 - Ethics

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Page 301 - 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 268 - OF GREAT PLACE. MEN in great place are thrice servants ; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business ; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to. seek power and to lose liberty ; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains ; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities....
Page viii - 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 301 - 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...
Page 268 - 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 261 - 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 t/ie 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 10 - This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the Schoolmen: who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning...
Page 295 - Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them, but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and...
Page 266 - HE that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune ; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Page 301 - 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.

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