204 



BACON 



For 



WATCHFULNESS 



More dangers deceive by fraud 

 than force. 



It is easier to prevent a danger 

 than to watch its approach. 



Danger is no longer light if it 

 once seem light. 



Against 



He bids danger advance, who 

 buckles against it. 



Even the remedies of dangers 

 are dangerous. 



It is better to use a few approved 

 remedies than to venture upon 

 many unexperienced particulars. 



WIFE AND CHILDREN 



For 



Charity to the commonwealth 

 begins with private families. 



Wife and children are a kind of 

 discipline, but unmarried men are 

 morose and cruel. 



A single life and a childless state 

 fit men for nothing but flight. 



He sacrifices to death who be- 

 gets no children. 



The happy in other respects are 

 commonly unfortunate in their 

 children, lest the human state 

 should too nearly approach the 

 divine. 



Against 



He who hath wife and children 

 hath given hostages to fortune. 



Generation and issue are human 

 acts, but creation and its works 

 are divine. 



Issue is the eternity of brutes; 

 but fame, merit, and institutions 

 the eternity of men. 



Private regards generally pre- 

 vail over public. 



Some affect the fortune of Pri- 

 am, in surviving his family. 



For 



YOUTH 



Against 



The first thoughts and counsels 

 of youth have somewhat divine. 



Old men are wise for them- 

 selves, but less for others and the 

 public good. 



If it were visible, old age de- 

 forms the mind more than the 

 body. 



Old men fear all things but the 

 gods. 



Youth is the field of repentance. 



Youth naturally despises the 

 authority of age, that everyone 

 may grow wise at his peril. 



The counsels whereat time did 

 not assist are not ratified by him. 



Old men commute Venus for 

 the graces. 



The examples of antithets here laid down may not, perhaps, 

 deserve the place assigned them ; but as they were collected 

 in my youth, and are really seeds, not flowers, I was unwilling 

 they should be lost. In this they plainly show a juvenile 

 warmth, that they abound in the moral and demonstrative kind, 

 but touch sparingly upon the deliberative and judicial. 



A third collection wanting to the apparatus of rhetoric, is 

 what we call lesser forms. And these are a kind of portals, 

 postern-doors, outer rooms, back-rooms, and passages of 



