The Works of the Late Right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Volume 3

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Page 409 - God loves from whole to parts : but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole. Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads ; Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace ; His country next, and next all human race ; Wide and more wide, th...
Page 432 - There will be none such any more, till in some better age, true ambition or the love of fame prevails over avarice ; and till men find leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this profession, by climbing up to the vantage ground...
Page 405 - Thus useful arms in magazines we place, All rang'd in order, and dispos'd with grace, But less to please the eye than arm the hand, Still fit for use, and ready at command.
Page 404 - The man was communicative enough ; but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? he had never spared time to think, all was employed in reading. His reason had not the merit of common mechanism. When you press a watch or pull a clock, they answer your question with precision; for they repeat exactly the hour of the day, and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know.
Page 340 - Modern history shows the causes, when experience presents the effects alone: and ancient history enables us to guess at the effects, when experience presents the causes alone. Let me explain my meaning by two examples of these kinds; one past, the other actually present. When the revolution of one thousand six hundred and eightyeight happened, few men then alive, I suppose, went farther in their search after the causes of it, than the extravagant attempt of king James against the religion and liberty...
Page 432 - ... so my lord Bacon calls it, of science ; instead of grovelling all their lives below, in a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane. Till this happen, the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked among the learned professions : and whenever it happens, one of the vantage grounds to which men must climb, is metaphysical, and the other historical knowledge.
Page 465 - And Philip the fourth was obliged, at last, to conclude a peace, on terms repugnant to his inclination, to that of his people, to the interest of Spain, and to that of all Europe, in the Pyrenean treaty.
Page 157 - By constitution we mean, whenever we speak with propriety and exactness, that assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system, according to which the community hath agreed to be governed.
Page 26 - But when they menace, they rise a note higher. They cannot do this in their own names. Men may be apt to conclude, therefore, that they do it in the name, as they affect to do it on the behalf, of the...
Page 332 - There is scarce any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men than that ridiculous and hurtful vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themselves to those of every other ; and to make their own customs, and manners, and opinions, the standards of right and wrong, of true and false.