Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think. 359 Joseph Roux: Meditations of a Parish Priest. Literature. Poets, 16. (Hapgood, Trans.) Every great writer may be at once known by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which is past his finding out. 360 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Preface. (Second edition.) We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before, as by their difference from it. 361 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Preface. (Second edition.) Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. 362 Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 2. Look in thy heart and write. 363 Sir Philip Sidney: Maxim. A quick ear and eye, an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things, a brooding, meditative spirit, are all that the essayist requires to start business with. 364 Alexander Smith: Dreamthorp. On the Writing of Essays. A perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and feelings, to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. 365 Thackeray: English Humorists. Sterne and I have got my spindle and my distaff ready, - my pen and never doubting for an instant that God will send me mind, flax. 366 Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself. 367 Trollope: Autobiography. Ch. 12. Cheerfulness is a characteristic of all great writers whose thoughts and imaginations have their spring in primitive feelings and affections, which are sound, vigorous, and unspotted with discontent and misanthropy. 36S E. P. Whipple: Success and its Conditions. There is no surer sign of a bad heart than for a writer to find delight in degrading his species. 369 E. P. Whipple: Literature and Life. Wit and Humor. All authors whatever in their dedication are poets. 370 Wycherley: Love in a Wood; or, St. James's Park. Dedication. AUTHORSHIP -see Authors. Authorship is a royal priesthood; but woe to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands on the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the race only that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, and use them for his own selfish ends. If a man have no heroism in his soul, no animating purpose beyond living easily and faring sumptuously, I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that of resorting to authorship as a vocation. 371 Horace Greeley: Recollections of a Busy Life. Letter to the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, March 5, 1860. Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by the aspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blessed, not from a void stomach clamoring to be gratified and filled. 372 Horace Greeley: Recollections of a Busy Life. Letter to the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, March 5, 1860. Sell not your integrity, barter not your independence. Beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by authorship, since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corrupt it; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulses of your own honest heart, speak as truth and love shall dictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labor of your hands until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secure your service; and you may frankly accept it without a compromise of your integrity or a peril to your freedom. 373 Horace Greeley: Recollections of a Busy Life. Letter to the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, March 5, 1860. AUTUMN -see Hoar-Frost, Indian Summer, October, Rivulets, Sunlight. Magnificent Autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds. He comes not like a hermit, clad in gray. But he comes like a warrior, with the stain of blood upon his brazen mail. His crimson scarf is rent. His scarlet banner drips with gore. His step is like a flail upon the threshingfloor. 374 Longfellow: Prose Works. Appendix II. The BlankBook of a Country Schoolmaster. XVII. Autumn. The tints of autumn, a mighty flower-garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, Frost. 375 AVARICE Whittier: Patucket Falls. see Ambition, Gambling, Office, War. Avarice is the vice of declining years. 376 George Bancroft: History of the United States of America. Ch. 17. Avarice grinds a man like emery. 377 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth If you would abolish avarice, you must abolish the parent of it, luxury. 378 Cicero: On Oratory and Orators. Bk. ii. Ch. 40. (Yonge, Translator.) Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for, although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. 379 Colton: Lacon. Avarice seldom flourishes at all but in the basest and poorest soil. 380 Fielding: Amelia. Avarice, which too often attends wealth, is than any that is found in poverty. 381 Bk. vi. Ch. 6. a greater evil Fielding: The Miser. Act v. Misery is generally the end of all vice, but it is the very mark at which avarice seems to aim. The miser endeavors to be wretched. 382 Fielding: The Miser. Act v. Avarice is not a social passion; and the true miser should retire into his cell to gloat over his treasures alone, without sympathy or observation. 383 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 434. Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's. 384 Hazlitt: Table Talk. Second Series. Pt. ii. Essay xxxiii. On the Main Chance. Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion, which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons. 385 Hume: Essays. XIII. Of the Rise and the Progress of the Arts and Sciences. Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the favor of the covetous there is a ready way, - bring money and nothing is denied. 386 Johnson: Rasselas. Ch. 39. Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. 387 Johnson: The Rambler. No. 151. There are some sordid souls, grovelling in filth and ordure, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls: sensible of no pleasure but one, which is get ting, or never losing; covetous to a farthing, busied wholly about their debtors, dreading a lowering of the coin, absorbed in contracts, purchases, bills of sale, mortgages, and such instruments. These people are neither relations, friends, citizens, Christians, nor even men: they have money. 388 La Bruyère: Characters. Of the Goods of Fortune. (Rowe, Translator.) The desire of riches does not proceed from a natural passion within us, but arises rather from vulgar, out-of-doors opinion of other people. 389 Plutarch: Lives. Marcus Cato. Avarice is more opposed to economy than to liberality. 390 La Rochefoucauld. Reflections. No. 167. The eye of an avaricious man cannot be satisfied with wealth, any more than a well can be filled with dew. 391 AVERSION. Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 7. Of the Effects of Nothing is stronger than aversion. 392 Wycherley: The Gentleman Dancing-Master. AVOCATION -see Vocation. Business is the rub of life, perverts our aim, casts off the bias, and leaves us wide and short of the intended mark. 393 Congreve: The Old Bachelor. Act i. Sc. 1. BALLADS. B. I have a passion for ballads. They are the gypsy-children of song, born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes and by-paths of literature, — in the genial summer-time. 394 BEARDS. -- Longfellow: Hyperion. Bk. ii. Ch. 2. He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. 395 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act ii. Sc. 1. BEAUTY- see Repose, Woman. Beauty is based on reason. (Mrs. Humphrey 396 Amiel: Journal, May 23, 1863. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and, for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine, and vices blush. 397 Bacon: Essays. Of Beauty. Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite. 398 George Bancroft: Miscellanies. Oration delivered before N. Y. Historical Society, Nor. 20, 1854. Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation. 399 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. All beauty does not inspire love. Some please the sight without captivating the affections. 400 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. i. Bk. ii. Ch. 14. (Jarvis, Translator.) Beauty, in a modest woman, is like fire, or a sharp sword at a distance: neither doth the one burn, nor the other wound those that come not too near them. 401 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. i. Bk. ii. Ch. 14. (Jarvis, Translator.) There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire. 402 Congreve: The Old Bachelor. Act iv. Sc. 11. Beauty, ever fleeting and continually renewed, does its work, then drops like the petals of the blossom when the fruit is set. 403 Hartley Coleridge: Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford. Introduction. Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks. 404 George Eliot: Romola. Ch. 19. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, without expression, tires. 405 Emerson: Conduct of Life. Beauty. The beautiful is never plentiful. 406 Emerson: Miscellanies. The Fortune of the Republic. The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary. 407 Emerson: Essay. The Poet. Beauty is a welcome guest everywhere. 408 Goethe: Elective Affinities. Pt. i. Ch. 4. Beauty is never a delusion. (Bohn edition.) 409 Hawthorne: Mosses from an Old Manse. Buds and Bird Voices. |