Father Mathew: His Life and Times |
Common terms and phrases
A. M. Sullivan Abolitionists American beggars believed better blessing Catholic cause CHAPTER cheerful Connemara Cork creed crowd dead dear death debt drink drunkard drunkenness Dublin emigrants England English enthusiasm face famine Father Mathew feel fight followers Franciscan friends Gavan Duffy give hand happiness hearers heart honour hope Irish Irish famine Irish-Americans Irishman knew labourers land landlords leader Lehenagh lived looked Lord meetings million misery murder nation never O'Connell O'Connell's once peace peasantry peasants political poor potatoes preached priest Protestant Puritans rebellion rebels reform repeal Repeal Association repeal movement ruin seemed slavery slums society Southern spirit starving stranger streets strong struggle success suffered teetotal teetotalers temperance bands temperance movement tenants Theobald Mathew Thomastown thought thousand Tipperary took the pledge total abstinence weak winter wish words workhouse wretched wrote Young Irelanders
Popular passages
Page 169 - Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Page 128 - Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink!
Page 34 - Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use.
Page 19 - Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute; Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
Page 26 - O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife — Fly hence, our contact fear!
Page 103 - Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
Page 47 - 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 104 - Plato's year: every man is not only himself; there hath been many Diogenes, and as many Timons, though but few of that name: men are liv'd over again, the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then, but there hath been some one since that parallels him, and is, as it were, his revived self.
Page 85 - He made me sit down on the only chair a moment; then took me by the hand as if I had been a little girl, and led me to the front of the scaffold, to see him administer the pledge. From a hundred to two hundred took it; and all the tragedies and theatrical representations I ever saw melted into one, could not have given me such emotion as that scene did. There were faces both of men and women that will haunt me while I live ; faces exhibiting such concentrated wretchedness, making, you would have...
Page 48 - He is almost the only man, too, that I have met in Ireland, who, in speaking of public matters, did not talk as a partisan. With the state of the country, of landlord, tenant, and peasantry, he seemed to be most curiously and intimately acquainted ; speaking of their wants, differences, and the means of bettering them, with the minutest practical knowledge. And it was impossible, in hearing him, to know, but from previous acquaintance, whether he was Whig or Tory, Catholic or Protestant. His knowledge...