Books and Reading: Or, What Books Shall I Read and how Shall I Read Them? |
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admiration ancient attractive biography books and reading called character Christ Christian Coleridge criticism culture delight diction earnest elevated eloquent eminent emotions English language English literature Essays ethical excited F. W. Newman facts faith favorite French Revolution furnish genius George Eliot George Grote give Goethe habits History of Greece human imagery imagination impressions individual influence inspiration instructive intellectual intelligent interest J. J. Thomas judge judgment language less litera literary lives Matthew Arnold ment Milton mind modern moral nature newspapers novels opinions passions period person Philosophy poem poet poetic poetry political principles read history reader reason refined religious books respect Robert Southey Sainte Beuve sense sentiment Shakspeare spirit story style suggests sympathy T. H. Huxley taste Theism thought and feeling tion tory treatises true truth ture verse volumes worth writer written
Popular passages
Page 84 - That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
Page 81 - Me miserable ! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
Page 372 - MY days among the Dead are past ; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude. My thoughts...
Page 272 - Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war ; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances.
Page 238 - Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.
Page 52 - Wise men have said, are wearisome ; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge ; As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Page 241 - If the time should ever come when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet .will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.
Page 73 - And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.
Page 73 - Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.
Page 251 - In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care.