EssaysPhillips, Sampson & Company, 1850 - 333 pages |
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Page 3
... to it in appropriate events . But the thought is always prior to the fact ; all the facts of history preëxist in the mind as laws . Each law in turn is made by circum- stances predominant , and the limits of nature give power ESSAY I.
... to it in appropriate events . But the thought is always prior to the fact ; all the facts of history preëxist in the mind as laws . Each law in turn is made by circum- stances predominant , and the limits of nature give power ESSAY I.
Page 4
... nature , as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant , as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces , so the hours should be instructed by the ages , and ...
... nature , as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant , as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces , so the hours should be instructed by the ages , and ...
Page 5
... nature hide itself . ' This remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves . This throws our actions into perspective and as crabs , goats , scorpions , the balance , and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs ...
... nature hide itself . ' This remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves . This throws our actions into perspective and as crabs , goats , scorpions , the balance , and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs ...
Page 12
... nature , soft and fluid as a cloud or the air , why should we be such hard pedants , and magnify a few forms ? Why should we make account of time , or of magnitude , or of figure ? The soul knows them not , and genius , obeying its law ...
... nature , soft and fluid as a cloud or the air , why should we be such hard pedants , and magnify a few forms ? Why should we make account of time , or of magnitude , or of figure ? The soul knows them not , and genius , obeying its law ...
Page 14
... Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws . She hums the old well - known air through innumerable variations . I Nature is full of a sublime family likeness through- out her works ; and delights in startling us ...
... Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws . She hums the old well - known air through innumerable variations . I Nature is full of a sublime family likeness through- out her works ; and delights in startling us ...
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action Æsop affection appear beauty behold better Bonduca Cæsar character child conversation divine doctrine earth Epaminondas eternal evil experience fable fact fear feel genius gifts give hand heart heaven Honest Man's Fortune hour human intel intellect less light live look lose man's mancers marriage mind moral nature never noble object ourselves OVER-SOUL pain paint Parliament of Love pass passion Perceforest perception perfect persons Phidias Phocion Pindar Plato Plutarch poet poetry prudence relations Rome scot and lot secret seek seems seen sense sensual sentiment Shakspeare society Sophocles soul speak spirit stand star sweet talent teach thee things thou thought tion to-day Transcendental club true truth ture universal vale of Tempe virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
Popular passages
Page 37 - Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
Page 44 - What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child. I will live then from the Devil.
Page 245 - Meantime within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise silence ; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related ; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing, and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.
Page 269 - The soul gives itself alone, original and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows, and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on its nature.
Page 53 - An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man ; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony ; the Reformation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of Fox ; Methodism, of Wesley ; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called " the height of Rome " ; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.
Page 46 - Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.
Page 86 - To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.
Page 61 - Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
Page 160 - Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed save bats and owls! A midnight bell, a parting groan, These are the sounds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Page 61 - Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes ; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.