Bacon's Essays

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Lee and Shepard, 1874 - Conduct of life - 641 pages

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Page 468 - 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. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned.
Page 468 - Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.
Page 429 - That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express ; no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Page 545 - Judges ought to be more learned than witty ; more reverend than plausible ; and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
Page 438 - 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...
Page 478 - Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested...
Page 341 - Discretion of speech is more than eloquence ; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words or in good order.
Page 153 - ... but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more credible, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions or seeds unplaced, should have produced this...
Page 574 - ... as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
Page 155 - 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...

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