Essays

Front Cover
Macmillan, 1884 - 538 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 47 - them heart and life, though they should clothe 'God with shape and colour. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 'and divines. With consistency a great soul has
Page 40 - put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which
Page 44 - world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
Page 56 - ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes, for that for ever degrades the past, turns all
Page 43 - Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.^ Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as
Page 39 - transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected comer, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and
Page 89 - No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on
Page 316 - fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth
Page 88 - of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of birds and flies. All things are double, one against another.—Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love for love.— Give and it shall be given you.—He that
Page 43 - of my fellows any secondary testimony. • What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think . This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It

Bibliographic information