Twelve EssaysG. Slater, 1849 - 261 pages |
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Page 10
... Turks , priest , and king , martyr and executioner , must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience , or we shall see nothing , learn nothing , keep nothing What befell Asdrubal or Cęsar Borgia , is as much 10 ESSAY I.
... Turks , priest , and king , martyr and executioner , must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience , or we shall see nothing , learn nothing , keep nothing What befell Asdrubal or Cęsar Borgia , is as much 10 ESSAY I.
Page 13
... secret sense , and poetry and annals are alike . The instinct of the mind , the purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history . Time dissipates to shining either the solid angularity of facts ...
... secret sense , and poetry and annals are alike . The instinct of the mind , the purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history . Time dissipates to shining either the solid angularity of facts ...
Page 29
... secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him , yet dotted down before he was born . One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Ęsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer ...
... secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him , yet dotted down before he was born . One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Ęsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer ...
Page 32
... secret virtues of minerals , of understanding the voices of birds , are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction . The preternatural prowess of the hero , the gift of perpetual youth , and the like , are alike the endeavour ...
... secret virtues of minerals , of understanding the voices of birds , are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction . The preternatural prowess of the hero , the gift of perpetual youth , and the like , are alike the endeavour ...
Page 63
... secret of fortune is joy in our hands . Welcome ever- more to gods and men is the self - helping man . For him all doors are flung wide . Him all tongues greet , all honours crown , all eyes follow with desire . Our love goes out to him ...
... secret of fortune is joy in our hands . Welcome ever- more to gods and men is the self - helping man . For him all doors are flung wide . Him all tongues greet , all honours crown , all eyes follow with desire . Our love goes out to him ...
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Common terms and phrases
action affection appear beautiful soul beauty becomes behold better black event Bonduca Cęsar character circle conversation divine doctrine Egypt Epaminondas eternal experience fact fear feel FREDERIKA BREMER friendship genius gifts give Greek hand heart heaven Heraclitus heroism highest hour human instinct intellect labour less light live look lose man's marriage mind moral nature never noble object painted pass perception perfect persons Petrarch Phidias Phocion Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry proverb prudence Pyrrhonism racter relations religion Rome sculpture secret seek seems seen sense sentiment society Socrates Sophocles soul speak spect Spinoza spirit stand stoicism sweet talent teach thee things thou thought tion to-day to-morrow true truth universal Vathek virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
Popular passages
Page 43 - No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution ; the only wrong, what is against it.
Page 48 - A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Page 40 - A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events.
Page 51 - Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation of Luther; Quakerism of Fox; Methodism of Wesley; Abolition of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest...
Page 45 - It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Page 63 - Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason.
Page 38 - To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
Page 138 - Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought That one might almost say her body thought.
Page 92 - Men suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Page 69 - Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.