Literary Values and Other PapersHoughton, Mifflin, 1904 - 295 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
æsthetic analogy aristocratic Arnold artist beauty better birds Brunetière Carlyle character charm cism common conscious criticism democracy democratic disinterested elective affinities elements eloquence Emerson emotions excellence experience fact fancy feel Ferdinand Brunetière flavor flowers Frederic Harrison French fresh genius George Eliot GILBERT WHITE give Goethe happiness human ideal ideas imagination intellectual interest judgment kind language less literary value literature live look Madame de Staël man's Massillon Matthew Arnold mind moral nature never one's past phrase pleasure poem poet poetic poetry probably prose Protestantism pure re-read reader reason religion religious Renan Sainte-Beuve says Schérer Schopenhauer seek seems sense sentences Shakespeare sonal soul speak spirit style suggestive taste Tennyson things thought tion touch tree true truth ture Victor Hugo vital Whitman whole words Wordsworth writer youth
Popular passages
Page 175 - 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 68 - 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 69 - 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 172 - 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 184 - 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 170 - 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 173 - 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 68 - ... 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. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation.
Page 213 - Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. It turns the man of science to stone.
Page 207 - But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred ; none are profane ; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.