The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

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G. Walker ... [and 9 others], 1820 - English literature

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Page 308 - Here will I hold. If there's a power above us — And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works — He must delight in virtue; And that which He delights in must be happy.
Page 259 - No. 65., there is the following very extraordinary paragraph: " The authenticity of Clarendon's History, though printed with the sanction of one of the first universities of the world, had not an unexpected manuscript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question, by the two lowest of all human beings, a scribbler for a party, and a commissioner of excise.
Page 327 - The Italian, attends only to the invariable, the great and general ; ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature modified by accident. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly...
Page 399 - thou to whose voice nations have listened, and whose wisdom is known to the extremities of Asia, tell me how I may resemble Omar the prudent. The arts by which...
Page 402 - In my fiftieth year I began to suspect that the time of travelling was past, and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power and indulge myself in domestic pleasures. But at fifty no man easily finds a woman beautiful as the Houries and wise as Zobeide. I inquired and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made me ashamed of wishing to marry. I had now nothing left but retirement ; and for retirement I never found a time till disease forced me from public...
Page 121 - Mr. Sober's chief pleasure is conversation; there is no end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches. But there is one time at night when he must go home, that his friends may sleep; and another time in the morning, when all the world agrees to shut out interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the thought.
Page 278 - That some of them have been adopted by him unnecessarily, may perhaps be allowed ; but in general they are evidently an advantage, for without them his stately ideas would be confined and cramped. "He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning.
Page 381 - At length he found it expedient to introduce wine, as an agreeable improvement, or a necessary ingredient, to his new way of living ; and having once tasted it, he was tempted, by little and little, to give a loose to the excesses of intoxication. His general simplicity of...
Page 131 - GENIUS of the place. It is a sort of inspiring deity, which every youth of quick sensibility and ingenious disposition creates to himself, by reflecting, that he is placed under those venerable walls, where a HOOKER and a HAMMOND, a BACON and a NEWTON, once pursued the same course of science, and from whence they soared to the most elevated heights of literary fame.
Page 329 - To instance in a particular part of a feature : the line that forms the ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is straight ; this then is the central form, which is oftener found than either concave, convex or any other irregular form that shall be proposed.

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