A First Book in Writing EnglishMacmillan, 1897 - 293 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adjective adverb aloud American Note Anglo-Saxon animal beauty begins better boats business letter called Celts CHAPTER clear comma composition correct Crustacea dictionary English explain expression fault feel figure following sentences GEORGE ELIOT give given grammatical hand Hawthorne idea kind lake language Latin Latin words literary living look loose sentence Lorna Doone mark matter Matthew Arnold means memory merely mind never noun Oral Exercise paragraph passage perhaps periodic sentence person phrase preceding pronoun punctuation reader relative clause Rhetoric Robert Louis Stevenson Ruskin Saxon semicolon sense singular Smithboro sometimes sound speak speech spelling story student synonyms tell tence theme thing thought tion to-day trope unity usage verb vivisection vocabulary whole writing Written Exercise young
Popular passages
Page 108 - That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work, that, as a mechanism, it is capable of...
Page 108 - ... let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return ! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support.
Page 107 - Sir, you may destroy this little institution ; — it is weak ; it is in your hands ! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work ! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land! " It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it ." Here the feelings which he had...
Page 78 - There is, first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move: the first is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail.
Page 77 - Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide the doors of existence ! What questions we ask of him ! what an understanding we have ! how few words are needed ! It is the only real society.
Page 209 - Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake Creep and intrude and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest. Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
Page 210 - Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the Church— those of bishop and pastor. A "Bishop
Page 94 - Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor ; thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife.
Page 208 - That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! What recks it them ? What need they ? they are sped ; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread : Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said, But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Page 241 - ... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough), and remain an utterly