Essays on Men and MannersBradbury, Evans, & Company, 1868 - 340 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
admire advantage affection afford agreeable alliteration allowed ambition amusement answer appear beauty better betwixt character Clelia colours consider contrived degree dignity discover disposition distinction distinguish dress elegance elegy endeavour envy equal esquire esteem fame fancy favour former fortune frequently gardening genius gentleman give greater happiness highwayman honour human humour idea imagination inclined inferior instance judgment Juvenal kind ladies landscape latter Leander Leasowes least less LIVY Lord Bolingbroke Lord Shaftesbury Lycidas manner means ment merit metre mind nation nature never objects observed occasion one's opinion Ovid passions perhaps person Piercefield pleasing pleasure plebeian poet poetry Polydore Pope proper proportion reason regard remarkable render respect Sallust scene seems sense shew sidered sometimes sort species spirit style sublime superior suppose taste thought tion trees truth Urim and Thummim vanity variety Virgil virtue vulgar WILLIAM SHENSTONE word writer
Popular passages
Page 232 - AVARICE is the most opposite of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is, to give and not receive. A MISER grows rich by seeming poor ; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
Page 336 - The melancholy of a lover is different, no doubt, from what we feel on other mixed occasions. The mind in which love and grief at once predominate is softened to an excess.
Page 165 - HAD I a fortune of eight or ten thousand pounds a year, I would methinks make myself a neighbourhood. I would first build a village with a church, and people it with inhabitants of some branch of trade that was suitable to the country round, I would then, at...
Page vi - When forced the fair nymph to forego, What anguish I felt at my heart ! Yet I thought — but it might not be so — 'Twas with pain that she saw me depart. She gazed, as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern ; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
Page 291 - When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments : when to those of our own sect, we call them trials : when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to impute them to the settled course of things.
Page 278 - The philosophers and ancient sages, who declaimed against the vanity of all external advantages, seem in an equal degree to have countenanced and authorized the mental ones, or they would condemn their own example. Superiority in wit is more frequently the cause of vanity than superiority of judgment ; as the person that wears an ornamental sword, is ever more vain than he that wears an useful one.
Page 240 - A lady of good-nature would forgive the blunder of a country esquire, who, through zeal to serve her with a glass of claret, should involve his spurs in her Brussels apron. On the contrary, the fop (who may in some sense use the words of Horace Quod verum atque decens euro et rogo et omnis in hoc sum) would be entitled to no pardon for such unaccountable misconduct.
Page 131 - ... of the pleasing kind. Objects should indeed be less calculated to strike the immediate eye than the judgment or well-formed imagination; as in painting. It is no objection to the pleasure of novelty that it makes an ugly object more disagreeable. It is enough that it produces a superiority betwixt things in other respects equal. It seems, on some occasions, to go even farther. Are there not broken rocks and rugged grounds to which we can hardly attribute either beauty or grandeur; and yet when...
Page 135 - I think the landscape painter is the gardener's best designer. The eye requires a sort of balance here ; but not so as to encroach upon probable nature.
Page 302 - That we are contemporaries, and persons whom future history shall unite, who, great part of us, however imperceptibly, receive and confer reciprocal benefits ; this, with every other circumstance that tends to heighten our philanthropy, should be brought to mind as much as possible, during our abode upon earth. Hereafter it may be just, and requisite, to comprehend all ages of mankind. THE best notion we can conceive of God, may be, that he is to the creation what the soul is to the body- : Dens...