Twelve essays [comprising Essays, 1st ser.]. |
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Page 10
... experience . There is a relation be- tween the hours of our life and the centuries of time . As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature , as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles ...
... experience . There is a relation be- tween the hours of our life and the centuries of time . As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature , as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles ...
Page 14
... experience , and verifying them here . All history becomes subjective ; in other words , there is properly no History ; only Biography . Every soul must know the whole lesson for itself - must go over the whole ground . What it does not ...
... experience , and verifying them here . All history becomes subjective ; in other words , there is properly no History ; only Biography . Every soul must know the whole lesson for itself - must go over the whole ground . What it does not ...
Page 20
... experience of every day is always verify- ing some old prediction to us , and converting into things for us also the words and signs which we had heard and seen without heed . Let me add a few ex- amples , such as fall within the scope ...
... experience of every day is always verify- ing some old prediction to us , and converting into things for us also the words and signs which we had heard and seen without heed . Let me add a few ex- amples , such as fall within the scope ...
Page 27
... experiences of his own . To the sacred history of the world he has the same key . When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy , a prayer of his youth , he then pierces to the ...
... experiences of his own . To the sacred history of the world he has the same key . When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy , a prayer of his youth , he then pierces to the ...
Page 35
... experience , or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock any more than he can draw to - day the face of a person whom he shall see to - morrow for the first time . I will not now go behind the general statement to explore ...
... experience , or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock any more than he can draw to - day the face of a person whom he shall see to - morrow for the first time . I will not now go behind the general statement to explore ...
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Common terms and phrases
action affection appear beauty becomes behold better black event Bonduca Cæsar character circle conversation divine doctrine Egypt Epaminondas eternal experience fact fear feel FREDERIKA BREMER friendship genius gifts give Greek hand heart heaven Heraclitus heroism highest hour human imagination instinct intellect labour less light live look lose man's marriage mind moral nature never noble object OVER-SOUL painted pass perception perfect persons Petrarch Phidias Phocion Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry proverb prudence Pyrrhonism racter relations religion Rome sculpture secret seek seems seen sense sentiment society Socrates Sophocles soul speak spect Spinoza spirit stand stoicism sweet talent teach thee things thou thought tion to-day to-morrow true truth universal Vathek virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
Popular passages
Page 45 - It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Page 38 - 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 40 - A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events.
Page 42 - 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 48 - A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Page 67 - Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.
Page 195 - ... counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue ; when it flows through his affection, it is love.
Page 45 - What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
Page 138 - Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought That one might almost say her body thought.
Page 90 - Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of nature water, snow, wind, gravitation - become penalties to the thief. On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.