Words and Their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English Language

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1870 - English language - 467 pages

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Page 238 - If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir.
Page 342 - And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
Page 157 - Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant...
Page 344 - Elmer; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him.
Page 397 - In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Page 75 - That cherubim, which now appears as a God to a human soul, knows very well that the period will come about in eternity, when the human soul shall be as perfect as he himself now is : nay, when she shall look down upon that degree of perfection, as much as she now falls short of it.
Page 69 - The sense of feeling can indeed give us a notion of extension, shape, and all other ideas that enter at the eye, except colours ; but at the same time it is very much straitened and confined in its operations to the number, bulk, and distance of its particular objects.
Page 71 - There are few words in the English language which are employed in a more loose and uncircumscribed sense than those of the fancy and the imagination.
Page 71 - He can converse with a picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.
Page 360 - tis so frequent, this is stranger still. Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, " That all men are about to live," For ever on the brink of being born : All pay themselves the compliment to think They one day shall not drivel, and their pride On this reversion takes up ready praise; At least their own; their future selves...

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