Selections from Carlyle

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Allyn & Bacon, 1895 - 283 pages

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Page 123 - Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help...
Page 44 - His person was strong and robust: his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents.
Page 24 - Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing ! That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o...
Page 255 - ... pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock: I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast...
Page 123 - Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble Most obedient servant, SAM. JOHNSON.
Page 261 - are not requisite for an historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand : so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree : only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.
Page 176 - Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.
Page 116 - At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Page 179 - ... power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indignation : an implacable indignation ; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god ! The eye too, it...
Page 251 - I have been at Duncan Gray to dress it in English, but all I can do is desperately stupid.

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