A Harmony of the Essays, Etc. of Francis Bacon

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A. Murray, 1871 - 584 pages
 

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Page 338 - They that deny a God destroy man's nobility ; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body ; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
Page xviii - My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place, or honours, but I have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength ; for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather...
Page xviii - 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 xii - Whilst he was commorant in the University, about 16 years of age (as his Lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself;), he first fell into the dislike of the Philosophy of Aristotle. Not for the worthlessness of the Author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes; but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a Philosophy (as his Lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of Works for the benefit of the Life of Man.
Page 445 - It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature and value of things, by this, that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase, for, whereas it hath been well said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self, certainly the lover is more.
Page xxiv - To perfect this last part is above our powers and beyond our hopes. We may, as we trust, make no despicable beginnings, the destinies of the human race must complete it ; in such a manner, perhaps, as men, looking only at the present...
Page xxii - And if your lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty: but this I will do, I will sell the inheritance that I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain, that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which, he said, lay so deep.
Page 9 - ... to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Page xvii - History. It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity, for the moon was never in her passion, or eclipsed, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting, and that though he observed not nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof ; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his former strength again.
Page xv - His meals were refections of the ear as well as of the stomach, like the Nodes Attica, or Convivia Deipno-sophistarum, wherein a man might be refreshed in his mind and understanding no less than in his body. And I have known some...

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