Bacon, His Writings and His Philosophy

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Griffin Bohn, 1862 - 715 pages
 

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Page 36 - Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue.
Page 16 - Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.
Page 6 - 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 74 - GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden. And, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.
Page 26 - TRUTH 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.
Page 27 - 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. 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 49 - It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an Opinion as is unworthy of him : for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely : and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose :
Page 75 - And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music,) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.
Page 80 - 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 need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Page 38 - THE joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears ; they cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter ; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.

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