The Essays Or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Bacon

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Clarendon Press, 1890 - 405 pages
 

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Page 184 - But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love.
Page 7 - 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 38 - 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 343 - 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 sectorcs. 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
Page 7 - ... 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 6 - A mixture of a lie doth ^ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's 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 111 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Page 187 - The parable of Pythagoras is dark but true : Cor ne edito, Eat not the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
Page 8 - ... 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. And therefore...
Page 305 - I think a painter may make a better face than ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music) and not by rule.

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