Prose masterpieces from modern essayists [ed. by G.H.P. |
Common terms and phrases
ancient ball beautiful best society better century certainly character CHARLES KINGSLEY Church civilization Cream Cheese Croesus dance dear delight doubt effect English Europe eyes fact father feel foreign genius give grace Greek hear Herodotus historians human ichthyosaurs kind ladies learned less live Livy look Lord Goderich Lucy man's manner Mardonius married ment merely mind molu moral narrative nations nature never noble paint peculiar perhaps picture pleasant Plutarch political Polly Poti Potiphar prie-dieu principles produced respect rich Roman Rome Sallust satire seems Sennaar social spirit stand story strange sure Tacitus talk taste tell thing THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY THOMAS CARLYLE thought thousand Thucydides tion told torian true truth Vanity Fair virtue Vivian Grey vulgar wealth whole winter garden women wonder writers Xenophon young youth
Popular passages
Page 44 - Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.
Page 284 - The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
Page 280 - The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction.
Page 221 - No picture, then, and no history, can present us with the whole truth : but those are the best pictures and the best histories which exhibit such parts of the truth as most nearly produce the effect of the whole.
Page 195 - Antechambers ; forgetting, that far away from such scenes, the mighty tide of Thought and Action was still rolling on its wondrous course, in gloom and brightness ; and in its thousand remote valleys, a whole world of Existence, with or without an earthly sun of Happiness to warm it, with or without a heavenly sun of Holiness to purify and sanctify it, was blossoming and fading, whether the " famous victory
Page 286 - It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which ordinarily proceed far before...
Page 287 - Shakespeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which any single faculty can be brought, would be less surprising than such a happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contemplation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind. It cannot, indeed, produce perfection, but it produces improvement...
Page 273 - While our historians are practising all the arts of controversy, they miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting the affections and presenting pictures to the imagination.
Page 151 - Englishman, for example, should feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged, when he comes over here and finds a people speaking what he admits to be something like English, and yet so very different from (or, as he would say, to) those he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, equals my thankfulness when I meet an Englishman who is not, like every other, or, I may add, an American of the same odd turn. Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his country as about his sweetheart,...
Page 164 - I am a man of the New World, and do not know precisely the present fashion of Mayfair, but I have a kind of feeling that if an American (mutato nomine, de te is always frightfully possible) were to do this kind of thing under a European roof, it would induce some disagreeable reflections as to the ethical results of democracy. I read the other day in print the remark of a British tourist who had eaten large quantities of our salt, such as it is. (I grant...