The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Volume 2John Murray, 1854 - 1 pages |
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absurdity acquainted Adieu admiration ALBEMARLE STREET amusement appeared applause barbarous beauty blank verse ceremony character China Chinese Circassia companion contempt continued cries criticism Daures desire despise distress dress edition adds emperor endeavour England English Europe excellence expected eyes fame fancy favour Feap fond fortune French Fum Hoam genius give Goldsmith happiness honour humour imagination king labour lady laws LETTER Lien Chi Altangi literary live look luxury mandarin mankind manner marriage Mencius merit mind Molière Moscow nation nature never obliged occasion OLIVER GOLDSMITH once passion Pekin perceive PETER CUNNINGHAM philosopher pity pleasing pleasure poet polite learning possessed praise present profession proper rapture reason regard replied republic of letters ridiculous says scarcely seemed society spleen taste thought Tom D'Urfey traveller virtue vols Voltaire Westminster Abbey whole wisdom write Zoroaster
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Page 383 - France : he said, he thought that was the best climate where he could be abroad in the air with pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days of the year, and the most hours of the day ; and this, he thought, he could be in England, more than in any country he knew of in Europe.
Page 277 - In some starved hackney sonneteer or me ! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens ! how the style refines ! Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought.
Page 462 - stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds ; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile ; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful members of society.
Page 463 - Now lost to all , her friends , her virtue fled , Near her betrayer's door she lays her head , And pinch'd with cold , and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour , When idly first, ambitious of the town , She left her wheel and robes of country brown.
Page 366 - ... value. Every polite member of the community, by buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret, might have been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A writer of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on fortune ; and for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such should remain in merited obscurity.
Page 105 - Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. I fancy myself at present, O thou reverend disciple of Tao, more than a match for all that can happen ; the chief business of my life has been to procure wisdom, and the chief object of that wisdom was to be happy. My attendance on your lectures, my conferences with the missionaries of Europe, and all my subsequent adventures...
Page 334 - ... calamities of decaying nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure, would at once induce him, with his own hand, to terminate the scene of misery ; but, happily, the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial ; and life acquires an imaginary value, in proportion as its real value is no more. Our attachment to every object around us increases, in general, from the length of our acquaintance with it. " I would not choose," says a French philosopher,...
Page 300 - The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, the most illustrious in the world. After a painful ascent of eight or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are lost in the darkness of the middle ages ; but, in the vast equality of the empire of China, the posterity of Confucius have maintained, above two thousand two hundred years, their peaceful honours and perpetual succession. The chief of the family is still revered, by the sovereign and the people, as the lively image of the wisest of mankind.
Page 462 - Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease ; the world has disclaimed them ; society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger.
Page 360 - The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.