The World's Best Essays, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume 4David Josiah Brewer Kaiser, 1900 - English essays |
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action appear Aristotle beauty better Bibliomania body born called character child Cicero Complete Costard daugh death Descartes desire disease divine dreams earth effect England English essay evil existence eyes fact father feel flowers French Gavial genius give Hampden-Sidney College heart heaven Horace Walpole human imagination Impressions of Theophrastus intellect Irish Bulls kind king knowledge ladies language learned less light living look Lord Margaret of Navarre matter means Microcosmography mind Miss Hawkins moral natural selection nature never noble noble savage object opinion opium passion perfect perhaps person philosophers Plato Plutarch poem poet political possess printed quarto reason seems sense Shakespeare soul speak species spirit star suppose things thou thought tion true truth verse virtue whole woman women words writing
Popular passages
Page 1491 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation : he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 1455 - Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth. And ere a man hath power to say, — Behold ! The jaws of darkness do devour it up : So quick bright things come to confusion.
Page 1402 - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To lose good days, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed today, to be put back tomorrow; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow; To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers...
Page 1619 - 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 1452 - And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London.
Page 1379 - And the star was shining. He grew to be a man whose hair was turning gray, and he was sitting in his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed with tears when the star opened once again. Said his sister's angel to the leader, "Is my brother come?" And he said, "Nay, but his maiden daughter.
Page 1493 - What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write...
Page 1619 - ... which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught...
Page 1603 - Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Page 1620 - The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.