Classical English Letter-writer: Or, Epistolary Selections; Designed to Improve Young Persons in the Art of Letter-writing, and in the Principles of Virtue and Piety. With Introductory Rules and Observations on Epistolary Composition; and Biographical Notices of the Writers from Whom the Letters are Selected ...

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T. Wilson, 1814 - 368 pages
 

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Page 141 - ... what is this absorbs me quite steals my senses shuts my sight drowns my...
Page 228 - This Exhibition has filled the heads of the Artists and lovers of art. Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.
Page 333 - I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth.
Page 345 - With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep awhile one parent from the sky...
Page 263 - I was alarmed, and prayed God, that however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding. This prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be very good: I made them easily, and and concluded myself to be unimpaired in my faculties.
Page 221 - The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another, is to guard, and excite, and elevate his virtues. This, your mother will still perform, if...
Page 121 - For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, or is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the gray hair to men, and an unspotted life is old age.
Page 262 - I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of regard however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil.
Page 340 - you shall be my confessor: when I first set out in the world, I had friends who endeavoured to shake my belief in the Christian religion. I saw difficulties which staggered me; but I kept my mind open to conviction. The evidences and doctrines of Christianity, studied with attention, made me a most firm and persuaded believer of the Christiau religion. I have made it the rule of my life, and it is the ground of my future hopes.
Page 254 - No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. But let us remember, that we are in the hands of Him who knows when to give and when to take away ; who will look upon us with mercy through all our variations of existence, and who invites us to call on him in the day of trouble. Call upon him in this great revolution of life, and call with confidence.

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