The Writings of John Burroughs: Literary values and other papersHoughton, Mifflin, & Company, 1904 |
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Page 8
... man . Any touch of the elemental , of the veracity and sin- gleness of the natural forces , gives value to a man's utterances , and Lincoln and Grant were undoubtedly the two most elemental men brought out by the war . The literary ...
... man . Any touch of the elemental , of the veracity and sin- gleness of the natural forces , gives value to a man's utterances , and Lincoln and Grant were undoubtedly the two most elemental men brought out by the war . The literary ...
Page 27
... man to be a good swordsman . What avails in literature is a quick and delicate sense of the life and individuality of words " a sense practiced as a blind man's touch , " or as a musician's ear , so that the magic of the true style is ...
... man to be a good swordsman . What avails in literature is a quick and delicate sense of the life and individuality of words " a sense practiced as a blind man's touch , " or as a musician's ear , so that the magic of the true style is ...
Page 32
... man's life and the seasons , because the seasons are not a universal fact of the globe , and man's life is . The four seasons are well defined in New England , but not in Ecuador . The agreement of appearances is one thing , the ...
... man's life and the seasons , because the seasons are not a universal fact of the globe , and man's life is . The four seasons are well defined in New England , but not in Ecuador . The agreement of appearances is one thing , the ...
Page 43
... man's life has been continuous in the past , then we may infer that it will be continuous in the future . Our earth ... man has seen live steam ; when it can be seen it is dead ; yet we know that it exists . We may complete a circle from ...
... man's life has been continuous in the past , then we may infer that it will be continuous in the future . Our earth ... man has seen live steam ; when it can be seen it is dead ; yet we know that it exists . We may complete a circle from ...
Page 48
... man's happiness only by what he gets , and not also by what he expects to get , is as futile as to try to express a ... man who expects ten and gets but five is more to be envied than he who expects a thousand and gets but fifty . He is ...
... man's happiness only by what he gets , and not also by what he expects to get , is as futile as to try to express a ... man who expects ten and gets but five is more to be envied than he who expects a thousand and gets but fifty . He is ...
Common terms and phrases
æsthetic analogy aristocratic Arnold artist beauty better birds Brunetière Carlyle character charm cism common conscious criticism democracy democratic disinterested doubt elective affinities elements eloquence Emerson emotions excellence experience fact fancy feel Ferdinand Brunetière flavor force Frederic Harrison French fresh genius George Eliot GILBERT WHITE give Goethe happiness Henry James human ideal ideas imagination intellectual interest judgment kind language less literary value literature live look Madame de Staël man's Matthew Arnold mind moral nature never one's past pleasure poem poet poetic poetry probably prose Protestantism pure re-read reader reason religion religious Renan Sainte-Beuve says Schopenhauer seek seems sense sentences Shakespeare sonal soul speak spirit style suggestive taste Tennyson things thought tion touch trees true truth ture Victor Hugo vital Whitman whole words Wordsworth writer youth
Popular passages
Page 10 - But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.
Page 76 - I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is.
Page 77 - Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Page 185 - Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands : A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee ; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee. So Lilia sang: we thought her halfpossess'd, She struck such warbling fury thro...
Page 194 - I saw it distinctly, more than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the head, deliver somewhat into its mouth. If it takes any part of its prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw.
Page 182 - The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed, — shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics.
Page 180 - It is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to the sense : It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art: It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument : And, of all human productions, the orations of DEMOSTHENES present to us the models which, approach the nearest to perfection.
Page 183 - At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands.
Page 199 - Spercheusque et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta! o qui me gelidis convallibus Haemi sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!
Page 225 - I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud; and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.