The Essays; Or, Counsels, Civil and Moral: And the Wisdom of the Ancients

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Little, Brown, 1879 - 360 pages
 

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Page 23 - Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt. Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair. And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Page 227 - 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 xiii - We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground : judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. 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 205 - There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Page 202 - The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.
Page 107 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion: for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Page 138 - Surely every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator ; and 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 152 - A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father ; to his wife, but as a husband ; to his enemy, but upon terms ; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.
Page xiii - 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 143 - IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech : Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

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