The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and ThingsBell & Daldy, 1870 - 538 pages |
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Page 21
... turn back with a wonderful look of sagacity to all sorts of exploded prejudices and absurdity . It is a pity that we cannot let well done alone , and that after labouring for centuries to remove ignorance , we set our faces with the ...
... turn back with a wonderful look of sagacity to all sorts of exploded prejudices and absurdity . It is a pity that we cannot let well done alone , and that after labouring for centuries to remove ignorance , we set our faces with the ...
Page 26
... turn to bombast , the others are mere truisms , and the last abso- lute nonsense . Yet we clothe them certainly with a fancied importance at the moment . This seems to be merely the effervescence of the blood or of the brain ...
... turn to bombast , the others are mere truisms , and the last abso- lute nonsense . Yet we clothe them certainly with a fancied importance at the moment . This seems to be merely the effervescence of the blood or of the brain ...
Page 35
... turn in conversation , that her relative had shown in her writings when young . The only answer I could get was an incredulous smile , and the observation that when she wrote anything as good as Evelina , or Cecilia , he might think her ...
... turn in conversation , that her relative had shown in her writings when young . The only answer I could get was an incredulous smile , and the observation that when she wrote anything as good as Evelina , or Cecilia , he might think her ...
Page 38
... turn away , as a waste of time and words , from attending to a person who just before assented to what you said , and whom you find the moment after , from something that unexpectedly or perhaps by design drops from him , to be of a ...
... turn away , as a waste of time and words , from attending to a person who just before assented to what you said , and whom you find the moment after , from something that unexpectedly or perhaps by design drops from him , to be of a ...
Page 39
... turn of a question en passant , as it arises . Those who have a repu- tation to lose are too ambitious of shining , to please . " To excel in conversation , " said an ingenious man , 66 one must not be always striving to say good things ...
... turn of a question en passant , as it arises . Those who have a repu- tation to lose are too ambitious of shining , to please . " To excel in conversation , " said an ingenious man , 66 one must not be always striving to say good things ...
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Common terms and phrases
abstract admiration affectation animals appearance artist beauty better brain character colour common Correggio COVENT GARDEN delight Edition English Engravings excellence expression face faculties fancy favourite Fcap feeling French friends genius GEORGE BELL give grace habit hand Hazlitt head heart History human idea Illustrations imagination impressions indifference Job Orton King living look Lord Lord Byron Lord Castlereagh Lord Keppel Mademoiselle Mars manner means Memoir mind moral nature never Northcote object opinion organ ourselves painter painting particular passion person philosophers physiognomy picture play pleasure poet poetry Portrait prejudice pretensions principle racter Raphael Rationalist reason seems sense sentiment Sentimentalist Shakespeare Sir Walter Scott sort soul speak spirit Spurzheim style supposed talk taste things thought throw tion Titian Translated truth turn understand vanity vols volume Whigs whole WILLIAM HAZLITT words writer
Popular passages
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.