Lord Bacon's Essays, Or Counsels Moral and Civil: Translated from the Latin by William Willymott, ... In Two Volumes. ...

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Henry Parson, 1720 - 448 pages

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Page 5 - ... of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet.
Page 3 - Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves...
Page 168 - So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man giveth himself as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.
Page 159 - Magna civitas, magna solitudo; because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship for the most part which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness...
Page 318 - Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like.
Page 33 - The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion ; secrecy in habit ; dissimulation in seasonable use ; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.
Page 6 - MEN fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark ; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
Page 21 - Certainly in taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy ; but in passing it over he is superior, for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith : It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence.
Page 82 - Concerning the materials of seditions, it is a thing well to be considered ; for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it), is to take away the matter of them ; for if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.
Page 133 - The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion (as we said) must ever be well weighed; and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus, with his hundred eyes; and the ends to Briareus, with his hundred hands, — first to watch, and then to speed.

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