The Essays of Francis Bacon

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C. Scribner's sons, 1908 - English essays - 293 pages

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Page 23 - 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 29 - I'll leave you till night; you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord ! [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Giiildenstern. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' ye :—Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and 'peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd ; Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit...
Page 118 - ... accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Page 109 - ... if time of course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end...
Page 213 - Dis's waggon! daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength...
Page 75 - melior natura;" which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain...
Page 5 - The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit.
Page 234 - 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 47 - But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground.
Page 126 - For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass; for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

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