A Thousand Thoughts from Various Authors

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Arthur B. Davison
Longmans, Green, and Company, 1880 - 374 pages

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Page 33 - ... books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
Page 234 - The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason.
Page 135 - What wondrous life is this I lead ! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Page 24 - Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at' the workmanship ; It is for homely features to keep home, They had their name thence ; coarse complexions, And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool.
Page 359 - When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tomb-stone, my heart melts with compassion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly...
Page 90 - On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off', they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared; a power, which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.
Page 163 - Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own: He who secure within, can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
Page 5 - Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity...
Page 239 - Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes; As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music...
Page 19 - I HAVE observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.

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