Essaying the Essay |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abraham Cowley adjectives beauty better borrowed boys called cello Charles Lamb Christian colour Daniel DeFoe delight discourse discover doth English essay essayist eyes face fancy fashion flowers Francis Bacon friends GEOFFREY CHAUCER give hand hath hear heart humorous ideas idle Joseph Addison King King Arthur lady learned literary live look manner means ment MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE mind mood naturall nature never night nine worthies noble painting perhaps person phrase play pleasure poet prose reader Richard Steele riches Robert Louis Stevenson saith sayn scholars schoolmasters seems selfe sentences Sir ROGER Sir Thomas Browne sort speak story style sure talk tell therein things Thomas Dekker thou thought tion true truth unto vanity whole wise words worthy writing written ye shuln
Popular passages
Page 82 - And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them ; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 102 - And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity; so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
Page 68 - STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned.
Page 70 - Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body, may have appropriate exercises.
Page 55 - Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality.
Page 72 - ... And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes like the warbling of music, than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness, yea, though it be in a morning's dew.
Page 156 - Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as STC — he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value.
Page 104 - There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.
Page 129 - I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb the congregation.
Page 82 - ... accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.