The Art of Living Long

Front Cover
W.F. Butler, 1903 - Centenarians - 208 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 208 - This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behaviour, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars...
Page 168 - Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves and re-resolves; then dies the same.
Page 118 - ... the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it ; is the sovereign good of human nature.
Page 124 - 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 120 - So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man giveth himself as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.
Page 120 - Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas: "Dry light is ever the best." And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.
Page 137 - Entertain hopes; mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of them ; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature.
Page 24 - tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens ; to the which our wills are gardeners : so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce ; set hyssop, and weed up thyme ; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many ; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry ; why, the power and corrigible authority...
Page 136 - There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic : a man's own observation, what he finds good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health...
Page 133 - Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity ; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin.

Bibliographic information