Literary and Social Judgments

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J. R. Osgood, 1873 - 352 pages

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Page 66 - I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.
Page 331 - This is the curse of life ! that not A nobler, calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain ; But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-choked souls to fill, And we forget because we must And not because we will.
Page 59 - If thou thinkest that thou art in this respect better than I am, thou art welcome. I praise God that I seek not that which I require not. Thou art learned in the things I care not for; and as for that which thou hast seen, I spit upon it. Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou seek Paradise with thine eyes?
Page 67 - That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the others into better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that they should rust and stagnate.
Page 59 - Of a truth, thou hast spoken many words; and there is no harm done, for the speaker is one and the listener is another. After the fashion of thy people thou hast wandered from one place to another until thou art happy and content in none.
Page 32 - Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be, — but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could — write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance — and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.
Page 122 - Lord's great dealings' by General Cromwell, the pride of all honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next Horncastle fair? Poetry in those old Puritans ? Why not ? They were men of like passions with ourselves; They loved, they married, they brought up children; they feared, they sinned, they sorrowed, they fought — they conquered. There was poetry enough in them, be sure, though they acted it like men, instead of singing it like birds.
Page 11 - ... which every moment waxed louder and more terrible — the fierce and tumultuous roar of a great people, conscious of irresistible strength, maddened by intolerable wrongs, and sick of deferred hopes ;" — perhaps no human strength or wisdom could have sufficed for the requirements of that fearful time. Perhaps no human power could then have averted the catastrophe. What Necker might have done had he acted differently and been differently made, we cannot say.
Page 58 - My illustrious Friend, and Joy of my Liver! "The thing you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor have I inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine.
Page 322 - ... He justifies Galileo in declaring, in spite of Joshua, that it was the earth and not the sun that moved ; but says that if Galileo had ' placed this thesis in juxtaposition with the Book of Joshua, so as to make that Book regarded as a tissue of fictions, then his "the earth moves," in spite of its absolute truth, would have become a falsehood.' Again, in order to condemn Dr Colenso by the contrast, he praises Dr Stanley for telling the reader that with regard both to the numbers, and the chronology,...

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