The Infirmities of Genius Illustrated by Referring the Anomalies in the Literary Character to the Habits and Constitutional Peculiarities of Men of Genius, Volume 1

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Adam Waldie, 1833 - Genius - 292 pages

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Page 13 - How small , of all that human hearts endure , That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Page 142 - An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who...
Page 224 - Yet must I think less wildly : — I have thought Too long and darkly, till my brain became, In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame : And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, My springs of life were poison'd.
Page 51 - The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall, — The majesty of darkness shall Receive my parting ghost ! This spirit shall return to Him That gave its heavenly spark; Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim When thou thyself art dark! No ! it shall live again, and shine In bliss unknown to beams of thine, By him recall'd to breath, Who captive led captivity, Who robb'd the grave of Victory, — And took the sting from Death...
Page 124 - Every thing about his character and manners was forcible and violent ; there never was any moderation. Many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine : but when he did eat, it was voraciously ; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.
Page 62 - In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth.
Page 228 - In England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drank as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed...
Page 116 - I ventured to tell him, that I had been, for moments in my life, not afraid of death; therefore I could suppose another man in that state of mind for a considerable space of time. He said, 'he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him.
Page 72 - Of the great number to whom it has been my painful professional duty to have administered in the last hours of their lives, I have sometimes felt surprised that so few have appeared reluctant to go to " the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.
Page 119 - ... reason to disentangle him. This was his anxious care, to go out or in at a door' or passage, by a certain number of steps from a certain point, or at least so as that either his right or his left foot, (I am not certain which,) should constantly make the first actual movement when he came close to the door or passage. Thus I conjecture : for I have, upon innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps with...

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