Boswell's Life of Johnson: Tour to the Hebrides (1773) and Journey into North Wales (1774)

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Bigelow, Brown & Company, Incorporated, 1786

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Page 381 - Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses ; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the...
Page 396 - The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood ; Stop up...
Page 304 - When forced the fair nymph to forego. What anguish I felt at my heart: Yet I thought — but it might not be so — Twas with pain that she saw me depart. She gazed as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
Page 94 - The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find Or make an enemy of all mankind! Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.
Page 147 - This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty,* frieze, Buttress, nor coign* of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt...
Page 38 - Burke, sir, is such a man, that if you met him for the first time in the street where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner, that, when you parted, you would say, this is an extraordinary man.
Page 91 - Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
Page 131 - Live you ? or are you aught That man may question ? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips. — You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.
Page 409 - M'Aulay passed the evening with us at our inn. When Dr Johnson spoke of people whose principles were good, but whose practice was faulty, Mr M'Aulay said, he had no notion of people being in earnest in their good professions, whose practice was not suitable to them.
Page 250 - Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures ; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life, what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.

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