A Reader's History of American Literature

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Page 301 - The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland. With a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of the "Thirty Years
Page 282 - Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, I will compose poetry ! The greatest poet even cannot say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...
Page 63 - I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea.
Page 47 - I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation— and it has been my favorite study— I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master states of the world— that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia.
Page 47 - Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation must be vain, must be fatal.
Page 23 - The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire...
Page 13 - Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight...
Page 14 - When I behold the heavens as in their prime, And then the earth, though old, still clad in green, The stones and trees insensible of time, Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; If winter come, and greenness then do fade, A spring returns, and they more youthful made. But man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid.
Page 174 - The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
Page 64 - I asked for a threepenny loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny-worth of any sort.

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