Essays, Second Series

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D. McKay, 1889 - 307 pages
 

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Page 182 - At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.
Page 31 - This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.
Page 18 - So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer bodie doth procure To habit in, and it more fairely dight With chearefull grace and amiable sight ; For of the soule the bodie forme doth take ; For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
Page 25 - As the eyes of Lyncscus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.
Page 17 - ... and from the heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. That will reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will no more be a noise ; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may be discerned from fools and satans. This day shall be better than my birthday : then I became an animal : now I am invited into the science of the real.
Page 231 - We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
Page 161 - As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos.
Page 57 - In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I ' seem to have lost a beautiful estate, — no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years ; but it would leave me as it found me, — neither better nor worse.
Page 182 - The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles.
Page 276 - ... for .ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate.

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