Self-formation

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Page 232 - And fades the grass away. 3 Our life contains a thousand springs, And dies if one be gone : Strange ! that a harp of thousand strings Should keep in tune so long.
Page 197 - If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure, Stranger ! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used ; that thought with him Is in its infancy.
Page 192 - ... -by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.
Page 194 - ... on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose...
Page 160 - MAN, as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much, as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind, permit him, and neither knows nor is capable of more.
Page 223 - Alas! — how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity!
Page 81 - You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity.
Page 193 - ... gratitude, passion ; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot on the neck of his king.
Page 81 - If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its Ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading.
Page 187 - If he does not know every thing that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does not exist.

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