The Art of Being Happy: From the French of Droz, 'Sur L'art D'être Heureuse'; in a Series of Letters from a Father to His Children: with Observations and Comments

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Carter & Hendee, 1832 - 313 pages
 

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Page 304 - Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods — rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.
Page 289 - If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore ; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their miseries doubled by the load of a wife.
Page 290 - Years old. They were the most mortifying Sight I ever beheld, and the Women more horrible than the Men. Besides the usual Deformities in extreme old Age, they acquired an additional Ghastliness in Proportion to their Number of Years, which is not to be described, and among half a Dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a Century or two between them.
Page 265 - Ah why, dear youth, in all the blooming prime Of vernal genius, where disclosing fast Each active worth, each manly...
Page 289 - For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.
Page 288 - This he learned from their own confession ; for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
Page 289 - Envy, and impotent desires, are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort, and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure ; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others are gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive.
Page 290 - The reader will easily believe, that from. what I had heard and seen, my keen appetite for perpetuity of life, was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I; had formed ; and thought no tyrant could invent a death, into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a life.
Page 274 - And darkness and doubt are now flying away, No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn. So breaks on the traveller, faint, and astray, The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. See Truth, Love, and Mercy, in triumph descending, And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom! On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomb.
Page 285 - I pity the man who can travel from Dan. to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren and so it is; and so is all the world to him, who will not cultivate the fruits it offers.

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