Literature Lover

Text  Fortune  is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the prices will fall; and again, it is sometimes like Sibylla's offer, which at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price; for occasion (as it is in the common verse) turneth a bald noddle after she hath presented her locks  in front, and no hold taken; or, at least, turneth the handle of the bottle first to be received, and after the belly, which is hard to clasp. There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. Dangers are no more light, if they once seem light; and more dangers have deceived men than forced them; nay, it were better to meet some dangers half way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long it is odds he will fall asleep. On the other side, to be deceived with too long shadows, (as some have been when the moon was...

Text Men  in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing: "Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere." Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they when it were reason; but are impatient of privateness even in age and sickness, which require the shadow: like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn. Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men...

Text 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. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor 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. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradi...

Text What  is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursive wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poet; nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not s...

  Text LITTLE think'st thou, poor flower,    Whom I've watch'd six or seven days, And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise, And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,              Little think'st thou, That it will freeze anon, and that I shall To-morrow find thee fallen, or not at all.    Little think'st thou, poor heart,    That labourest yet to nestle thee, And think'st by hovering here to get a part In a forbidden or forbidding tree, And hopest her stiffness by long siege to bow,              Little think'st thou That thou to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake, Must with the sun and me a journey take.    But thou, which lovest to be    Subtle to plague thyself, wilt say, Alas ! if you must go, what's that to me? Here lies my business, and here I will stay You go to friends, whose love and...

Text     W onder, by my troth, what thou and I      Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?      But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?      Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?      ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.      If ever any beauty I did see,      Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.        And now good-morrow to our waking souls,      Which watch not one another out of fear;      For love, all love of other sights controls,      And makes one little room an everywhere.      Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,      Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,      Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.             My face in thine eye, ...