A COLLECTION OF SENTENCES
OUT OF SOME OF THE WRITINGS OF THE LORD BACON.[1]
1. It is a strange desire which men have, to seek power, and lose liberty.
2. Children increase the cares of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death.
3. Round dealing is the honour of man's nature; and a mixture of falsehood is like allay in gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.
4. Death openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
5. Schism in the spiritual body of the church is a greater scandal than a corruption in manners: as, in the natural body, a wound or solution of continuity is worse than a corrupt humour.
6. Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
7. He that studieth revenge, keepeth his own wounds green.
8. Revengeful persons live and die like witches: their life is mischievous, and their end is unfortunate.
9. It was a high speech of Seneca, after the manner of the Stoics, that the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished; but the good things which belong to adversity are to be admired.
10. He that cannot see well, let him go softly.
11. If a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery: as the more close air sucketh in the more open.
12. Keep your authority wholly from your children, not so your purse.
13. Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise: for the distance is altered; and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on, they think themselves go back.
14. That envy is most malignant which is like Cain's, who envied his brother, because his sacrifice was better accepted, when there was nobody but God to look on.
15. The lovers of great place are impatient of privateness, even in age, which requires the shadow: like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street door, though there they offer age to scorn.
16. In evil, the best condition is, not to will: the next not to care.
17. In great place ask counsel of both times: of the ancient time, what is best; and of the latter time, what is fittest.
18. As in nature things move more violently to their place, and calmly in their place: so virtue in ambition is violent; in authority, settled and calm.
19. Boldness in civil business is like pronunciation in the orator of Demosthenes: the first, second, and third thing.
20. Boldness is blind: wherefore it is ill in counsel, but good in execution. For in counsel it is good to see dangers: in execution, not to see them, except they be very great.
21. Without good nature, man is but a better kind of vermin.
22. God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
23. The great atheists indeed are hypocrites, who are always handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.
24. The master of superstition is the people. And in all superstition, wise men follow fools.
25. In removing superstitions, care would be had, that, as it fareih in ill purgings, the good be not taken away with the bad: which commonly is done when the people is the physician.
26. He that goeth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
27. It is a miserable state of mind, and yet it is commonly the case of kings, to have few things to desire, and many things to fear.
28. Depression of the nobility may make a king more absolute but less safe.
29. All precepts concerning kings are, in effect, comprehended in these remembrances: remember thou art a man; remember thou art God's vice-gerent: the one bridleth their power, and the other their will.
30. Things will have their first or second agitation: if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune.
31. The true composition of a counsellor is, rather to be skilled in his master's business than his nature; for then he is like to advise him, and not to feed his humour.
- ↑ Baconiana, page 65.
