From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 30 - It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossne.ss.
Page 102 - The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night, Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern — unseen before — A path to higher destinies. Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted — wholly vain — If rising on its wrecks, at last, To something nobler we attain.
Page 29 - Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark! what discord follows; each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or rather right and wrong Between whose endless jar justice resides Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Page 137 - Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song.
Page 60 - It is even more certain that nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes, and that the chief business of mankind is to learn that order and govern themselves accordingly. Moreover, this scientific " criticism of life" presents itself to us with different credentials from any other.
Page 36 - MAY I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence : live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self. In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.
Page 185 - Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
Page xv - On parent knees, a naked new-born child Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled ; So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.
Page 57 - Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it.
Page v - WE can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events — if such they may be called — which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying- their near approach, by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds.

Bibliographic information