EssaysHoughton, Mifflin, 1884 - 270 pages |
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action animal appears beauty begin to hope believe Cæsar cern character chivalry church conversation dæmon debt of honor divine earth ence equal Eumenides exist experience express eyes fact faith fancy fashion feel flowers force genius gentleman gift give Goethe hand heart heaven hour human individual intellect labor landscape leave live look Lord Lord Chatham man's manner marriage Mencius ment mind moral Napoleon nature never NOMINALIST numbers object palmistry party persons phrenologists plant Plato Plutarch poet poetry politics poor present Proclus Pythagoras religion rich rience secret seems selfish sense sentiment society soul speak speech spirit stand stars symbol talent thee things thought tion true romance truth ture universe virtue whilst whole wise wish wonder words Yunani Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 191 - State we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born ; that they are not superior to the citizen ; that every one of them was once the act of a single man ; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case ; that they all are imitable, all alterable ; we may make as good, we may make better.
Page 157 - ... supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this...
Page 71 - All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moral, and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man, but I have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from the Eternal.
Page 142 - 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 19 - Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the 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 the body make.
Page 34 - ... happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found within their world another world, or nest of worlds; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not stop.
Page 18 - ... by the beauty of things, which becomes a new and higher beauty when expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as a picture-language. Being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old value; as the carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. "Things more excellent than every image," says Jamblichus, "are expressed through images.
Page 161 - Nature. The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery : Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west.
Page 268 - in every hour, paid or unpaid; see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought: no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Page 15 - For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem — a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.