The World's Best Essays, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume 6 |
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Page 2334 - Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people— a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...
Page 2269 - Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the...
Page 2197 - It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience.
Page 2432 - In behint yon auld fail dyke I wot there lies a new-slain Knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair. ' His hound is to the hunting gane, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,. His lady's...
Page 2392 - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted out a thousand!" which they thought a malevolent speech.
Page 2392 - I loved the man, and do honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any). He was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature : had an excellent fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions...
Page 2390 - Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert, that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden.
Page 2386 - ... let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, ts or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.
Page 2360 - By his admirable contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, or rend an oak, is as nothing to it.
Page 2197 - ... over all the world, but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families the concord whereof...