Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1895 - English literature - 923 pages
 

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Page 460 - A daring pilot in extremity; Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Page 422 - Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Page 19 - There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day : he is unable to discriminate colours, or recognise faces.
Page 23 - The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed.
Page 22 - Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush — the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.
Page 397 - My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place, or honours : but I have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed, that God would give him strength ; for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but...
Page 19 - Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were forever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps,...
Page 192 - There is no book in our literature, on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old, unpolluted English language ; no book which shows so well, how rich that language is, in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.
Page 554 - And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
Page 597 - I shall say the less of Mr Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause when I have so often drawn it for a good one.

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