Nugae Literariae: Prose and Verse |
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Common terms and phrases
Æneid Æschylus amidst ancient Anglo-Saxon appears Aristophanes asked Bacchus beauty boast brain called character Cicero common course Craniology death dialect divine earth Eleans Eleusis enquiry Euripides evil express Falstaff fame father favour fear feel Games genius give gods Grecian Greece Greek head heart heaven Hercules Herodotus heroes Homer honour human idea impression intellectual Iphitus Julius Cæsar Jupiter king language Latin living look Macbeth means ment mind moral mysteries nations nature never noble Olympia Olympic Olympic Games once original Osiris Palæstra passion Pausanias peculiar perfect perhaps person philosophy Pindar Plato Plutarch poet probably prove quæ race Roman Rome sacred Saxon says scarcely scene seems sentiment Shakspeare signifies solemn Sophocles soul sound speak species spirit strange supposed temple thee thing thou thought Thucydides tion tragedy truth virtue word
Popular passages
Page 192 - I have almost forgot the taste of fears : The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.
Page 415 - There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd : The which observ'd, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life ; which in their seeds, And weak beginnings, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time...
Page 147 - ... if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?
Page 213 - tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.
Page 380 - Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off...
Page 401 - In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn ; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me. That I have much ado to know myself.
Page 153 - But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think...
Page 139 - WHAT is truth ?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients.
Page 259 - When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd, Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reap'd Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
Page 146 - Between two worlds life hovers like a star, 'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. How little do we know that which we are ! How less what we may be ! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles ; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash'd from the foam of ages ; while the graves Of empires heave but like some passing waves.