The Essays of Francis Bacon

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T. Y. Crowell, 1901 - 273 pages

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Page 206 - 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 206 - ... studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. 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 207 - 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 104 - ... 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. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, 'Magna civitas, magna solitudo...
Page 1 - 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 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.
Page 109 - ... his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more ; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue, as the alchymists use to attribute to their stone, for man's body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature.
Page 104 - For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature; except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and...
Page 69 - It is a strange thing that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.
Page 136 - It is good in discourse, and speech of conversation, to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest: for it is a dull thing to tire, and as we say now, to jade any thing too far.
Page 144 - For as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it, sometimes, loseth or disturbeth the victory : of great riches, there is no real use, except it be in the distribution ; the rest is but conceit. So saith Salomon ; " Where much is, there are many to consume it ; and what hath the owner, but the sight of it, with his eyes...

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