The Diversions of a Book-lover

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Harper & brothers, 1903 - 322 pages

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Page 106 - I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth : and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself — kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.
Page 106 - For 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.
Page 93 - Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude.
Page 241 - ... that architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and justify the first...
Page 16 - He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still...
Page 165 - The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Page 66 - Go, wretch, resign the presidential chair, Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. Go, search with curious eyes for horned frogs; 'Mid the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs ; Or, where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme.
Page 181 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 242 - From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world: Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

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