Brief Longhand: A System of Longhand Contractions, by Means of which the Principal Advantages of Shorthand are Secured Without Resort to Stenographic Characters... to which are Added Several Appendixes Pertaining to Phonotype and Phonography

Front Cover
A.J. Graham, 80 Madison street, 1857 - Shorthand - 97 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 63 - Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Page 36 - Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it — they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.
Page 63 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy...
Page 76 - More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of, in every path He treads down that which doth befriend him, When sickness makes him pale and wan. Oh mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him.
Page 31 - As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere...
Page 36 - True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.
Page 63 - Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others, but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.
Page 37 - The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object — this, this is eloquence ; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
Page 36 - The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible.
Page 30 - Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness, while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding, with unshrinking firmness, the bitterest blasts of adversity.

Bibliographic information