The Praise of Folly: And Other Papers

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Houghton Mifflin, 1923 - 230 pages
 

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Page 103 - Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man : henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit : henceforward it is settled the book is perfect ; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes noxious : the guide is a tyrant.
Page 138 - I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.
Page 105 - Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.
Page 105 - I embrace the common; I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.
Page 105 - Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.
Page 106 - See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
Page 38 - But — a stirring thrills the air Like to sounds of joyance there That the rages Of the ages Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!
Page 102 - The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun ; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow ; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, "beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages.
Page 32 - Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale ; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of, having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.
Page 163 - This week has given the public the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind. The minister's speech of last Tuesday is not to be paralleled in the annals of this country. I am in doubt whether the imposition is greater on the sovereign or on the nation. Every friend of his country must lament that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures...

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