Letters and Social AimsHoughton, Mifflin, 1904 - 441 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Æschylus appears astronomy beauty believe Ben Jonson better Boston called character conversation delight divine earth electric word eloquence Emerson England essay experience expression fact fancy feel Gawain genius give Goethe Hafiz hand heard heart heaven human Iliad imagination immortality inspiration intel intellect John Sterling journal king laws learned lecture live look Madame de Staël manners matter mind moral muse Nachiketas nations Nature never once orator passage perception Persian persons philosophy Pindar Plato Plutarch poem poet poetry politics quote RALPH WALDO EMERSON religion rhyme Saadi scholar secret sense sentence sentiment Shakspeare Simorg song soul speak speech spirit Swedenborg talent thee things thou thought Timur tion true truth ture universal verse Viasa virtue voice whilst whole William Blake wise words write Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 321 - Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? Verdict which accumulates From lengthening scroll of human fates, Voice of earth to earth returned, Prayers of saints that inly burned,— Saying, What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; Heart's love will meet thee again.
Page 47 - At her feet he bowed he fell, he lay down at her feet he bowed, he fell where he bowed, there he fell down dead...
Page 282 - And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: O my only light, It cannot be That I am he, On whom thy tempests fell all night.
Page 439 - Shall it survey, shall it recall : Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all that was at once appears.
Page 48 - Good, to whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, To keep my life and honour unassail'd. Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? I did not err, there does a sable cloud •Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove...
Page 191 - Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
Page 426 - By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest ; for 'tis thine own : And tumble up and down what thou find'st there.
Page 387 - ... find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, — his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, — until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature...
Page 368 - ... bittern's boom, a desert make Which no false art refines. Down in yon watery nook, Where bearded mists divide, The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, The sires of Nature, hide. Aloft, in secret veins of air, Blows the sweet breath of song, O, few to scale those uplands dare, Though they to all belong! See thou bring not to field or stone The fancies found in books; Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, To brave the landscape's looks.
Page 110 - ... true eloquence I find to be none, but the serious and hearty love of truth: and that whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.