The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things

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Bell & Daldy, 1870 - 538 pages

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Page 85 - To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way For honour travels in a strait so narrow, W'here one but goes abreast: keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue: If you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost...
Page 522 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 297 - I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool. You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk, Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow, The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Page 280 - As a sick girl. Ye gods ! it doth amaze me A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world And bear the palm alone.
Page 170 - Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Page 85 - For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast : keep then the path ; For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue : If you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, ' Like to an entered tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost...
Page 459 - Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, — change it rather; but The art itself is nature.
Page 235 - Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise ; Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, 'Women and fools must like him, or he dies : Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke.
Page 279 - Ten thousand great ideas fill'd his mind; But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind.
Page 277 - Though equal to all things, for all things unfit, Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit : For a patriot, too cool ; for a drudge, disobedient ; And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient. In short, 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, Sir, To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

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