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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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If on St Vincent's Day the sky is clear
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. |
Francis
Bacon |
It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, "It is true
greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a
god."
Francis Bacon; Of Adversity
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon; Of Adversity
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon; Of Marriage and Single Life
Men in great place are thrice servants,—servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
Francis Bacon; Of Great Place
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said,
"If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
Francis Bacon; Of Boldness
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.
Francis Bacon; Of Goodness
The remedy is worse than the disease.
Francis Bacon; Of Seditions
I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.
Francis Bacon; Of Atheism
In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world; as to say,
"The world says," or "There is a speech abroad."
Francis Bacon; Of Cunning
There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat in the pan;" which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him.
Francis Bacon; Of Cunning
Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
Francis Bacon; Of Fortune
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.
Francis Bacon; Of Fortune
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.
Francis Bacon; Of Youth and Age
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon; Of Studies
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon
Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced.
Alexander Pope , 1741
The Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A nuf here and they may pepper and salt it as they please.
Lord Timothy Dexter, American eccentric, born on January 22,
1747
IME the first Lord in the younited States of A mericary Now of Newburyport it is the voise of the peopel and I cant Help it and so Let it goue Now as I must be Lord there will foller many more Lords pretty soune for it dont hurt A Cat Nor the mouse Nor the son Nor the water Nor the Eare then goue on all is Easey Now bons broaken all is well all in Love Now I be gin to Lay the corner ston and the kee ston with grat Remembrence of my father Jorge Washington the grate herow 17 sentreys past before we found so good a father to his shildren and Now gone to Rest
Lord Timothy Dexter
The wisdom displayed in Shakespeare was equal in profoundness to the great Lord Bacon's
Novum Organum.
William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)
In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other
one – the Brontosaurian.
The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that Shakespeare didn't, and strongly suspects that Bacon did. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am so fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable
law – which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31.
Mark Twain, from 'Is
Shakespeare Dead?'; My Autobiography
The English Renaissance lasted from about 1580 to 1626, and produced some of the world's most outstanding literature. At the core of this output was Sir Francis Bacon, a prodigious writer and philosopher. By opening the rational world to the creative mind, Bacon set the foundations upon which modern society has been built. In his major work,
The Advancement of Learning, Bacon proposed the Novum Organum, a "new tool" for the rational mind: inductive reasoning. Better-known today as the scientific method, inductive reasoning replaced the syllogistic simplicity of Aristotelian deductive reasoning with the creative act of hypothesis and experiment. Consider Bacon's statement:
"If a man will begin with certainties,
he will end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts,
he will end in certainties."
Source:
SirBacon.com
See here of causes why in London
So many men are made and undone
That Arts and honest trading drop
to swarm about ye Devil's Shop
Who cuts out Fortune's Golden Haunches
Trapping their souls with lots and chances
Sharing 'em from Blue Garters down
To all blue aprons in the town.
Here all religions flock together,
Like tame and wild fowl of a father
Leaving their strife, Religious bustle
Kneel down to play at pitch and Hustle
Thus, when the Shepherds are at play
Their flocks must surely go astray.
the woeful cause yet in these times
Honour, and honesty are crimes.
That publickly are punished by
Self interest and Vilany;
So much for monys magick power
Guess at the rest, you find out more.
William Hogarth,
'An Emblematic Print
on the South Sea', 1720
I have given the name Manly Cove to this place today, because of the confidence and manly behaviour shown by the natives. They seemed desirous of our hats and attempted to seize some. Like King, Bowes had to order pants to be pulled down for the
'Indians'. They expressed a wish to know of what sex we were.
Captain Arthur Phillip, from the log of HMS Supply, January 22, 1788 –
Manly, near Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour)
I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
Lord Byron, English poet, born on January 22, 1788
The Night is also a religious concern – and even more so – when I viewed the Moon and Stars through Herschell's telescope – and saw that they were worlds.
Lord Byron
Man! Thou pendulum between a smile and tear.
Lord Byron
Society is now one polished horde
Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
Lord Byron
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly lives on.
Lord Byron
'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
Lord Byron
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
Lord Byron
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause for breath,
And love itself have rest.
Lord Byron
Oh! too convincing – dangerously dear –
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
Lord Byron
Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
Lord Byron
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! – A bubble of Seed which may be spilt in a whore's lap – or in the Orgasm of a voluptuous dream – might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte – there is nothing remarkable recorded of their Sires – that I know of.
Lord Byron
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires.
Lord Byron
There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
Lord Byron
The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
Lord Byron
I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.
Lord Byron
I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.
Lord Byron
Through life's road so dim and dirty
I have dragged to three and thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing except thirty-three.
Lord Byron; for his 33rd birthday, 1821
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yes, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
Lord Byron; 'On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year' (1824)
Friendship is Love without his wings.
Lord Byron
There is a gulf where thousands fell,
There all the bold adventurers came;
A narrow sound, though deep as hell,
'Change Alley is the dreadful name.
Dean Swift, on the Stock Exchange scandal of the South Sea Bubble, 1720
To be aware that we are asleep is to be on the point
of waking; and to be aware that we are only partially awake is the first
condition of becoming and making ourselves more fully awake.
Alfred Orage, British intellectual, born on January 22, 1873; 'Are
We Awake?'
We do not turn on the lights over the whole house when we are only using
one floor. That would be a waste of light. Similarly we ought not to be using
energy on all three stories of our organism when we are only actually using one
of them.
Alfred Orage; 'Economizing our
Energy'
It is possible to have aesthetic emotions and not
have human emotions.
Alfred Orage;
'On
Love'
He was a man who could be both perfectly right and
wholly wrong, but when he was wrong one respected him all the more, as a man who
was seeking the essential things ...
TS Eliot on Alfred
Orage
Orage’s impersonality was his greatness, and the
breadth of his mind was apparent in the speed with which he threw over a
cumbrous lot of superstitions, and a certain number of fairly good ideas, for a
new set of better ones.
Ezra Pound on Alfred
Orage
Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies ... Just give them ten years to develop and you're going to see the greatest artistic medium the world has known.
DW Griffith, American director, born on January 22, 1875
Remember how small the world was before I came along. I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen.
DW Griffith
Movies are written in sand: applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.
DW Griffith
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? What art? What science?
DW Griffith
Oh, that peace may come! (referring to the war in South Africa then in progress).
Last words of Britain's Queen Victoria, who died on January 22, 1901
Saturday I think was the most dismal, awful day that could be imagined. All the shops were closed, and every place of business. No papers published. Nothing but church bells to be heard for the memorial services. Not a scrap of colour to be seen anywhere, and even the weather seemed to be in mourning, for snow was falling on the ground and gave the effect of black and white. Every house had drawn blinds from one till four, and the place looked like a blind town.
Joan Kyffin Willington (ed.), Maisie: her life in her letters from 1898 to
1902, 1992 (referring to the death of Queen Victoria)
Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government.
George V of the
United Kingdom, as Ramsay MacDonald formed Britain's first Labour Government, January 22, 1924
January 22 is the 22nd
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 343
days remaining (344 in leap years).
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Feast of St Vincent of Saragossa, patron saint of Lisbon
(Early Witlow
grass,
Draba verna, is
today's
plant, dedicated to this saint.)
A deacon of Saragossa, Vincent was martyred c. 304 during the Emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. Imprisoned in Valencia for his faith, and tortured on a gridiron – a story perhaps adapted from the martyrdom of another son of Huesca in Aragon, Spain, St Lawrence – Vincent, like many early martyrs in the early hagiographic literature, succeeded in converting his jailer. Though he was finally offered release if he would consign Scripture to the fire, Vincent refused.
Vincent represents a Christianisation of the ancient Greek sun god Apollo,
whose rites were performed at this time of year to bring warmth back to
the frozen land. Consequently, St Vincent and his feast day are associated
with fire, just as we noted on January 20 and 21 for
the Eve and Night of St Agnes.
St Vincent was cheerful under torture. He was broiled over fire, put in
a dungeon, bound in stocks and left without provisions. When God sent
angels to comfort him, the jailer saw the cell full of light and St
Vincent singing praises to God, and was converted on the spot. Some parts
of St Vincent's bones are still preserved in religious houses in France.
His body was thrown among the rushes in a marsh,
but was defended from beasts and birds of prey by a raven. Angels also
looked after the mangled and burned body of this archetype of suffering
and rebirth – Apollo/Vincent. Dacian had the body cast into the sea, but
it came to shore and was buried by a pious widow.
Vincent
is also the patron of bakers, roof-makers, sailors, schoolgirls, tile-makers,
roofers, Portugal, vine dressers (because he protects from frost), vinegar makers, vintners, wine growers, wine makers. He is patron saint of drunkards for no apparent reason.
The Cape
Verde island of São
Vicente, a former Portuguese
colony was named in his honour.
Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days More More
Weather prognostication
There
was an old saying "Vincenti
festo, si sol radiet, memor esto", ("... merely calling us
to remember if the sun shone on that day" – Robert
Chambers)
"The matter
was a mystery to modern investigators of folk lore, till a gentleman
residing in Guernsey, looking through some family documents of the
sixteenth century, found a scrap of verse expressed in old provincial
French:
Chinese
New Year (varies)
