Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay: With Indexes. Authors, 544; Subjects 571; Quotations, 8810

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J.B. Lippincott, 1880 - Quotations, English - 764 pages
 

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Page 83 - ... 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 467 - Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins...
Page 47 - HAD rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Page 401 - Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power...
Page 351 - Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland...
Page 343 - But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration ; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and...
Page 269 - But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground.
Page 399 - I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Chr — 's sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.
Page 86 - There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language , no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.
Page 410 - I HOLD every man a debtor to his profession; from the which, as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.

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