Laconics: Or the Best Words of the Best Authors ...

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Page 46 - Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. 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 12 - 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 90 - Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide...
Page 66 - 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 30 - I will give it to you in short: for ' a word to the wise is enough,' as poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him G 2. to speak his mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows :— " Friends," says he, " the taxes are indeed very heavy ; and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride,...
Page 51 - Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Page 306 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ? Thou art more lovely and more temperate : Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date...
Page 159 - True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise ; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self ; and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions...
Page 306 - And summer's lease hath all too short a date ; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd ; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd. But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
Page 59 - I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there ; if I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand hold me,

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