The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Edward Lytton, Volume 2

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Page 38 - 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 178 - Great men may jest with saints : 'tis wit in them ; But, in the less, foul profanation. Lucio. Thou'rt in the right, girl ; more o' that. Isab. That in the captain's but a choleric word Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
Page 30 - I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer.
Page 28 - It may be cancelled for the present ; but revolution of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For as though there were a metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them.
Page 175 - When all is done (he concludes), human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.
Page 37 - ... tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt: ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.
Page 35 - ... had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat.
Page 30 - Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature ; they being both servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial ; for nature is the art of God...
Page 31 - The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation.
Page 37 - Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities.

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