Essay on Milton

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Macmillan Company, 1914 - 128 pages
 

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Page 74 - Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence.
Page 61 - Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory ! There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom.
Page xxxiii - I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man - be virtuous - be religious - be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.
Page 62 - Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom.
Page 121 - The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce ; restored to the Good of both Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law, and other Mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compared.
Page 25 - But now my task is smoothly done: I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue; she alone is free. She can teach...
Page 17 - His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead.
Page 74 - The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute.
Page 11 - In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection.
Page 77 - People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle.

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