Essays on Men and MannersWilliam W. Morse, 1804 - 204 pages |
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afford agreeable alliteration allowed ambition amusement answer appear arities beauty betwixt character Clelia colours consider contrived conversation dactyle degree dignity discover distinction distinguish dress effect elegance encrease endeavour envy equal esquire esteem Fairy-queen Falstaff fame fancy favour former fortune frequently garden genius gentleman give greater happiness highwayman honour imagination indolence instance judgment Juvenal kind ladies landscape latter least less Livy Lord Bolingbroke Lord Shaftesbury manner means ment merit mind nature never objects observed occasion one's opinion Ovid passions perhaps person pleasing pleasure plebeian poetry Polydore Pope pride proper proportion racter reason regard remarkable render respect Sallust scene seems self-love sense shew short sidered sions sometimes sort spirit style sublime superior suppose sure tain taste temper thing thought tion trees truth tural variety VIRG Virgil virtue vulgar WILLIAM SHENSTONE word writer
Popular passages
Page 161 - ... to curse him to his face. A GLASS or two of wine extraordinary only raises a valetudinarian to that warmth of social affection, which had naturally been his lot, in a better state of health. DEFERENCE is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. BE cautious not to consider a person as your superior, merely because he is your superior in the point of assurance. This has often depressed the spirit of a person of desert and diffidence.
Page 124 - Language is to the understanding what a genteel motion is to the body ; a very great advantage. But a person may be superior to another in understanding, that has not an equal dignity of expression ; and a man may boast an handsomer figure, that is inferior to another in regard to motion. LXIII. The words " no more" have a single pathos : reminding us at once of past pleasures and the future exclusion of it.
Page 123 - Christian scheme (as he introduces the deities of both acting simultaneously) wholly inexcusable : much art and judgment are discovered in parts, and but little in the whole. One may entertain some doubt, whether the perusal of his monstrous descriptions be not as prejudicial to true taste, as it is advantageous to the extent of imagination, Spenser, to be sure, expands the last; but then he expands it beyond its due limits. After all, there are many favourite passages in his Faerie Queene, which...
Page 94 - Art, indeed, is often requisite to collect and epitomize the beauties of nature ; but should never be suffered to set her mark upon them ; I mean, in regard to those articles that are of nature's province ; the shaping of ground, the planting of trees, and the disposition of lakes and rivulets.
Page 105 - 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 proper distances, erect a number of genteel boxes of about a thousand pounds a piece, and amuse myself with giving them all the advantages they could receive from taste.
Page 152 - 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 156 - ... the superiority. Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment. **~~ Virtue should be considered as a part of taste (and perhaps it is so more in this age, than in any prece•ding one) and should as much avoid deceit or...
Page 85 - Are there not broken rocks and rugged grounds, to which we can hardly attribute either beauty or grandeur, and...
Page 142 - There is nothing more universally prevalent than flattery. Persons, who discover the flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications. It is a tacit sort of compliment, that he esteems them to be such as it is worth his while to flatter : " And when I tell him he hates flattery, " He says he does, being then most flattered.
Page 108 - ... is not selfish, trickish, and disingenuous. So it is the nature of servitude to discard all generous motives of obedience ; and to point out no other than those scoundrel ones of interest and fear. There are however some exceptions to this rule, which I know by my own experience. OH DRSSS. DRESS, like writing, should never appear the effect of too much study and application.