Representative English EssaysHarper, 1923 - 499 pages |
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admiration Alexander Meiklejohn alliteration American Arnold Bennett beauty believe better bird Bishop of Beauvais Brazen Bull called college spirit dark death delight Domrémy dream earth England English essays expression eyes fancy feel France frog giant armadillo Girondist give hand hear heard heart human Hyder Ali idea intellectual interest jungle kind King kinkajous knowledge Lafcadio Hearn learned leaves light literature live look man's matter means ment mind Montaigne nature nature books ness never Nevermore night Nupee once passion perhaps persons phrase pleasure poem poet prose Quaker seems seen sense silence solitude sound speak stand style taste teachers tell things thought tion trainbands true truth turn verse voice walk whole wind woods words write young
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Page 305 - Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!
Page 17 - ... the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
Page 15 - Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols : and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Page 6 - We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.
Page 16 - WHAT is Truth? said jesting Pilate ; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief ; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients.
Page 21 - Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple.
Page 300 - When it most closely allies itself to Beauty; the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world...
Page 279 - A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Page 16 - TRUTH. WHAT is truth ? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief...
Page 18 - Truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene,) and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.