The Spectator, Volume 8

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J. Tonson, 1729
 

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Page 271 - I'm weary of conjectures : — this must end them. [Laying his hand on his sword. Thus am I doubly armed : my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die.
Page 269 - Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into...
Page 23 - The immoderate breadth of the features made me very much out of humour with my own countenance, upon which I threw it from me like a mask. It happened very luckily that one who stood by me had just before thrown down his visage, which it seems was too long for him.
Page 269 - Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us, — And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works, — He must delight in virtue; And that which He delights in must be happy.
Page 23 - I did not question, came loaded with his crimes; but, upon searching into his bundle, I found that, instead of throwing his guilt from him, he had only laid down his memory. He was followed by another worthless rogue, who flung away his modesty, instead of his ignorance.
Page 146 - ... there is more beauty in the works of a great genius, who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.
Page 146 - I could give instances out of all the tragic writers of antiquity who have shown their judgment in this particular, and purposely receded from an established rule of the drama, when it has made way for a much higher beauty than the observation of such a rule would have been. Those who have surveyed the noblest pieces of architecture and...
Page 45 - ... that passed through it. The galaxy appeared in its most beautiful white. To complete the scene, the full moon rose at length in that clouded majesty which Milton takes notice of, and opened to the eye a new picture of nature, which was more finely shaded and disposed among softer lights than that which the sun had before discovered to us.
Page 47 - ... capacities, as they are creatures, that is, beings of finite and limited natures. The presence of every created being is confined to a certain measure of space ; and consequently his observation is stinted to a certain number of objects.
Page 22 - Jupiter, that every mortal should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw them together in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this purpose. I took my stand in the centre of it, and saw with a great deal of pleasure the whole human species marching one after another, and throwing down their several loads, which immediately grew up into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise above the clouds.

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