History of English Literature, Volume 1

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Chatto & Windus, 1871 - English literature

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Page 339 - What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Page 451 - Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor - one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Page 321 - She is the fairies' midwife ;" and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies" Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners...
Page 335 - But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly.
Page 436 - Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions, hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook...
Page 218 - The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.
Page 438 - Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal : but when lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk ; But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being.
Page 450 - And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Page 302 - Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still ; The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
Page 451 - Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost Archangel, " this the seat That we must change for Heaven? — this mournful gloom For that celestial light ? Be...

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