The English instructor; or, Useful and entertaining passages in prose, selected from the most eminent English writers

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Vergani, editor and Bookseller, quai de l'Horloge du Palais, no. 28, près le Pont-au-Change, 1801 - English literature - 258 pages
 

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Page 133 - Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Page 188 - Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?
Page 132 - ... for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one: but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned.
Page 202 - I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood ; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time; nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.
Page 188 - Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.
Page 133 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Page 248 - Alas ! ' said I, ' man was made in vain ; how is he given away to misery and mortality, tortured in life, and swallowed up in death ! ' " The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. ' Look no more,' said he, ' on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity ; but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it.
Page 187 - Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause ; and be silent that you may hear : believe me for mine honour; and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom; and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his.
Page 243 - I had ever heard : they put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival...
Page 92 - YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope ; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia.

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