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Popular passages
Page 186 - What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
Page 95 - Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight ? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
Page 182 - Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time...
Page 247 - MAN, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower ; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
Page 70 - ... be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present as with their homage and their fealty the approaching reformation ; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people,...
Page 186 - There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things : our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.
Page 45 - EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine...
Page 46 - Ye who love a nation's legends, Love the ballads of a people, That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen, Speak in tones so plain and childlike, Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken...
Page 187 - Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages. To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan ;+ disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself.
Page 123 - Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water...