"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been satisfactorily answered. In 1812, Dr. Mason Good, in an essay he wrote on the question, passed in review all the persons who had then been suspected of writing these celebrated letters. They are, Charles Lloyd and John Roberts, originally treasury clerks; Samuel Dyer, a learned man, and a friend of Burke and Johnson; ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... prophet of the Socialists. Sartor Resartus is an admirable fantasia; The French Revolution is, with all its faults, a really fine piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly sketches of personalities. But I think it is in Past and Present, and the essay on Chartism, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony than in such ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... came to me I learned that his schoolmaster had given him a holiday task. All the "fellows" in his form had to write an essay entitled "My Holidays, and How I Turned Them to Account," and to send it to their preceptor. Primus troubled his head little about the task while the composition of it was yet afar off; but as his time drew near he referred to it with indignation, and to his master's action in ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... graceful and able a writer as Longfellow illustrates fully the truth of these suggestions. Mr. Charles F. Johnson, in a well-written essay on Longfellow, Emerson, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... attempt to disturb the compromise about the teaching of dogmatic theology, solemnly agreed to by the first School Board for London, the fifteenth Essay; and, more particularly, the note n. 3, may be ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... seen him touch a spade, and hardly ever saw him in the garden: when I did, I always felt as if something was going to happen. He said he had in it tried to copy the wilderness laid out by lord St. Alban's in his essays. I found the volume, and soon came upon the essay, On Gardens. The passage concerning the wilderness, gave me, and still gives me so much delight, that I will transplant it like a rose-bush into this wilderness of mine, hoping it will give ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... tome!— which developes, in thirteen minutes, more chivalrous intelligence than is contained even in the mystical leaves of the Fayt of Arms and Chyvalrye of our beloved Caxton. Be my pulse calm, and my wits composed, as I essay the description of this marvellous volume. Beneath a large illumination, much injured, of Louis XI. sitting upon ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... wide is the difference between Eastern ideas and our own upon the subject of the preceding essay. They will also show that any general consideration of the real analogies existing between this strange combination of Far-Eastern beliefs and the scientific thought of the nineteenth century could scarcely be made intelligible by strict philosophical accuracy in the use of terms relating to the ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Roger" and cheering in a manner that made the bay mare plunge and rear. With the least possible delay, the Claimant is got into the brougham, the door is banged to, and the bay mare is driven swiftly through the Yard, the crowd closing in behind. But when they reach the gates, and essay to pass and flood the streets beyond, where the gigantic umbrella of the aged gentleman looms uplifted over the shoulders of the line of police like the section of a windmill sail, the iron gates are ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... done next; but he saw quite distinctly that he was in a dilemma, and must manage to get out of it by some means or other. If he could only succeed in this instance, as well as he had succeeded in his former essay in the black art, all might be well, and Margery be carried in triumph into the settlements. Margery, pro haec vice, was his goddess of liberty, and he asked for no higher reward, than to be permitted to live the remainder of his days in the sunshine of her smiles. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... good-tempered notice of certain novels then popular, and passed on to speculations regarding the new ideals of life set before English women. Piers spoke of it as a mere bit of apprentice work, meant rather to amuse than as a serious essay. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... an essay on Chinese Metaphysics was, look out China under the letter C and metaphysics under the letter M, and combine your information. "Would you mind telling me, sir, if the Cambridge boat keeps time or not to-day?" said ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... laughter," said Thackeray, in his essay on the English humorists, "you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than the life of poor Harlequin, who possesses with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories you have ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... that segment of the universe which is accessible to us. The teachings of the doctrine of evolution as to the origin and destiny of Man have, moreover, a very great speculative and practical value of their own, quite apart from their bearings upon any ultimate questions. The body of this essay is accordingly devoted to setting forth these teachings in what I conceive to be their true light; while their transcendental implications ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... personality will express itself in the selection of details and in the emphasis he places upon one detail or another. Among the literary forms which, besides being conceptual, are also concerned with persuasion, we find the oration, the essay, a great deal of business correspondence, and much of what we read in ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... said he, 'that it is safer to run no such risk. No priestly pride has ever exceeded that of sacerdotal females. A very lowly curate, I might, perhaps, essay to rule; but a curatess would be sure to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... history, a military treatise, an essay, or a scrap of autobiography. It has no more accuracy or literary merit than letters usually possess. So I hope you will not judge it too harshly. My only object is to try and show as truthfully as I can the part played in this monstrous war by a despatch ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... we now had parted, and essay'd With utmost efforts to surmount the way, When I did feel, as nodding to its fall, The mountain tremble; whence an icy chill Seiz'd on me, as on one to death convey'd. So shook not Delos, when Latona there Couch'd to bring forth the twin-born eyes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a man's broken heart, a heart broken by a trial dragged out interminably till the culprit, whether he were innocent or guilty, was punished far beyond his deserts. Macaulay's famous description of Hastings's trial is well known, and we are reminded of his no less familiar essay on Lord Clive by the monuments of two men, a soldier and a sailor, who co-operated with Clive in the foundation of our Indian Empire. The East India Company is responsible for the inartistic, grotesque erections ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... great principles enunciated in it to the questions at issue, but one judgment can exist with respect to the importance of those principles, and the vigorous and fervid eloquence with which they are enforced. If WORDSWORTH had never written a single verse, this Essay alone would be sufficient to place him in the highest rank of English poets.... Enough has been quoted to show that the Essay on the Convention of Cintra was not an ephemeral production, destined to vanish with the occasion which gave it birth. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... displayed, that gives us the measure of his talent. No amount of mere discussion and statement, such as this, could give a just conception of the greatness of this power. It must be felt in the books themselves, and all that can be done in the present essay is to recall to the reader the more general features of each of the five great romances, hurriedly and imperfectly, as space will permit, and rather as a suggestion ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the interest of the narrative, and information thus obtained has been added either in the form of Notes or Appendix. Under the latter head, acknowledgment is principally due to an able and interesting essay on the architecture of Cashmere, by Capt. Cunningham, and also to a paper by M. Klaproth, both of whom appear to have treated more fully than any other writers the subjects to ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... up the rear of the papers laid before Parliament contains a review and a reasoned summary of all our attempts and all our failures,—a concise, but correct narrative of the painful steps taken to bring on the essay of a treaty at Paris,—a clear exposure of all the rebuffs we received in the progress of that experiment,—an honest confession of our departure from all the rules and all the principles of political negotiation, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "lend me your cloak and scrip. I must see this strange bridal, and it may be I shall make some there repent of the wrong they have done to a helpless maiden. I will essay to enter." The change was soon made, and Horn darkened his face and hands as if bronzed with Eastern suns, bowed his back, and gave his voice an old man's feebleness, so that no man would have known ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the first essays of the new English scholarship in this untried field,—the first attempts at original composition here, derive, it must be confessed, their chief interest and value from that memorable association in which we find them. It was the first essay, which had to be made before those finished monuments of art, which command our admiration on their own account wholly, could begin to appear. It was 'the tuning of the instruments, that those who came afterwards might play the better.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... or 'The Mysteries of Slabtown.' Arthur's stories and ten thousand others of the same class have taken their place, and commonplace as they may often be, have brought a healthier influence into action. No book written with an honest heart is lost; no poem or essay, however poor, fails to reach some mark. The printed page that to you or me looks so barren and poor, may carry to some soul a message of healing; may to some eyes have the light of heaven about it. And to how ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... angry with you," I answered, "I am not, like Thorndyke, one to essay the impossible, and if I could be angry it would hurt me more than it would you. But, in fact, you are not to blame at all, and I am an egotistical brute. Of course you were alarmed and distressed; nothing could be more natural. So now let me ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... monument to the essayist Hazlitt, born 1778, died 1830. The inscription says that he lived to see his deepest wishes gratified as he expressed them in his essay on the "Fear of Death," and proceeds to set forth at considerable length the tenor of ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... be called "literary." And there is nothing we are so scared of to-day as the literary. It was not those dons the critics, we are told on the subway cards, who made Dickens immortal—it was YOU. And our foremost magazines advertise the "un-literary essay." "Literary expression," that Addisonian English stuff, whose elegance pleasantly conceals the lack of ideas beneath, is taboo in these parts. What we want is writers who have something to say, and who say it naturally and without any beating ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... See the essay "On the Struggle for Existence in Human Society" below; and Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 276, for ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... necessarily require any reply, I made none. I now began to suspect that I was mistaken in the estimate of the character of my interrogator that he was neither the captain of a band of pirates nor the leader of a press-gang; and it being my first essay at carrying out a system of falsehood, I was terribly frightened at the dilemma in which I was involved. I lost my presence of mind, and instead of frankly avowing the truth, as policy, as well as principle, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the precise meaning of being positively thigmotactic is a stimulant to the imagination, which opens the way to an entire essay on the disadvantages of education—a thought once strongly aroused by the glorious red-and-gold hieroglyphic signs of the Peking merchants—signs which have always thrilled me more than the utmost efforts of our ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... details unknown to Lockhart, his biography is in many respects the best we possess, and is never likely to be superseded. Even Mr. Henley is "glad to agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is the subject of Carlyle's famous essay ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... in her hand, brown braids bobbing, she would thus essay two, three, even four steps of staggering ascent, collapsing then ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... published in 1806. It appears likewise in a Dublin play of 1740, "New Spain; or, Love in Mexico." See also, the American Museum, vol. I, page 77. The singing of "Yankee Doodle" is likewise to be noted (See Sonneck's interesting essay on the origin of "Yankee Doodle," General Bibliography), not the first time it appears in early American Drama, as readers of Barton's ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard University examination in Latin, German, French history, belles lettres, and such things, and does it brilliantly, too, not in a commonplace fashion. She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar with the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a Shakespearean character, her English is fine and strong, her grasp of the subject is the grasp of one who knows, and her page is electric with light. Has Miss Sullivan taught her by the methods of India and the American public ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life was not dull. Mr. Ferrars was always employed, for besides the education of his children, he had systematically resumed a habit in which he had before occasionally indulged, and that was political composition. He had in his lofty days been the author of more than one essay, in the most celebrated political publication of the Tories, which had commanded attention and obtained celebrity. Many a public man of high rank and reputation, and even more than one Prime Minister, had contributed in their time to its famous pages, but never without being paid. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... interest, as it is one of the examples of successful imposture, selected by Hume in his Essay on Miracles; with the reply to which by Paley, in his Evidences of Christianity, most readers are familiar. The commentators on Suetonius agree with Paley in considering the whole affair as a juggle between the priests, the patients, and, probably, the emperor. But what will, perhaps, strike ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... An essay by Mr. George Ormond, based on manuscripts in the Edinburgh Record office (Scottish Review, July, 1892), adds little to what is known about the Porteous Riot. It is said that Porteous was let down alive, and hanged again, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... complaints of the English. I also wrote letters for the king of Golconda to the same purpose, that we might hereafter have quicker justice. I then dispatched the ambassadors of Narsinga to Velore, not having fit opportunity to essay the promised trade in that country, owing to my short stay, and in respect of the troubles consequent upon the succession: yet I left letters with them for the first English ships that might come to the coast, giving them my best advice. The 7th December, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... treasures, giving water to the parched and thirsty land, and, as Mr. Fiske remarks, "making plain what is doing under cover of darkness."[13] The lightning-flash, too, which now and then, as a lesson of warning, instantly strikes dead those who either rashly or presumptuously essay to enter its awe-inspiring portals, is exemplified in another version of the same legend. A shepherd, while leading his flock over the Ilsentein, pauses to rest, but immediately the mountain opens by reason of the springwort or luck-flower in the staff on which he leans. Within the cavern a white ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... suggestions which are shown to be misleading by a study of the extracts from the original sources embodied in the essay of whose preface it forms a part. It is true that the cultural policy of William of Wykeham was an extravagant one, and that he was in need of money when the system of tenure was being revolutionized on his estates; but it is misleading ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... Essays, however, has almost forced upon me the necessity of likewise republishing the reply I gave at the time of their appearance. The first Essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review, and others followed in the preface to the sixth edition of Supernatural Religion, and in that and the complete edition, in notes to the portions attacked, where reply seemed necessary. I cannot hope ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their value. What they aimed at, and what they attained, is the subject of the following essay. ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... his grandfather's letters. Shows the tone of their friendship. The boy has just won an English Essay Prize, and "they say that parts of my essay were vulgar," he writes. "My special interest," his grandfather answers, "is aroused by the charge of occasional vulgarity. If it be true, it is not improbable that the writer caught the infection from his grandfather. With one half the world, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... Essay on the Development of Libraries and their Fittings, from the earliest times to the end of the ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... of any or who, having herself solicited, hath not been hearkened. And although I know by natural and true reasons that it is e'en as I say, yet should I not speak thereof with so full an assurance, had I not many a time and with many women made essay thereof. And this I tell thee, that, were I near this most sanctified wife of thine, I warrant me I would in brief space of time bring her to that which I have already gotten of other women.' Whereupon quoth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Henrietta Vinton Davis perform on various occasions, and it is my candid judgment, reached after mature deliberation, and a fair knowledge of the merits of nearly all her set who essay to excel in the histrionic art, that she has no superior in the race as a master of the profession of her choice. (John ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... length. The little green flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole, this grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage of the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to say, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Windsor, each armed with scissors, to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that very amusing volume, the Literary Conglomerate, in an "Essay on Hair," how Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce an anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair, for which pious zeal he was much commended; and how "Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired great honour by a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... tropical luxuries, which I later found in the distant corners of the world, took form in the little play of the "Donkey's Skin." Leaving out the mystical experiences at the commencement of my life, I can affirm that almost all my fancies had their essay on that tiny stage. I was nearly fifteen when the last decorations, unfinished ones, were laid away forever in the cardboard box that served them for ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Leonardo's, who may have been the "man who is willing to teach me the secrets of the art of perspective," and whom Duerer in 1506 travelled from Venice to Bologna to see; it is even possible that he saw Leonardo himself in the latter town. In 1527 he issued an essay on the "Art of Fortification," which the development of artillery was then transforming; and authorities on this very special science tell us that Duerer is the true author of the ideas on which ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Williams College, where he graduated in 1856, thus came that institution to grasp the honor of giving to the United States of America one of our most popular presidents. The grasp of the mind of Garfield, even at this early period, can be seen by glancing at the title of his essay, "The Seen and the Unseen." He next became a professor; later, principal ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... most unscientifically hauled the fish out by the line, exclaiming, in the bitterness of his heart, "that rods were contemptible childish things, and that a stout branch of a tree was the rod for him." This last essay seemed to have frightened all the rest away, for not another bite ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Homeric names of the deities, in place of adopting the Latin forms; and in this matter he has little doubt that every scholar will approve his choice. Mr Archdeacon Williams has commonly followed the same plan in those very spirited prose translations that adorn his learned Essay, Homerus. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... letter he had just received from Richard Trench—a most beautiful letter. What a fine fellow he is, and what a noble set of young men these friends of my brother's are! After tea read Arthur Hallam's essay on the philosophical writings of Cicero. It is very excellent; I should like to have marked some of the passages, they are so admirably clear and true; but he has only lent it to me. His Latin and Greek quotations were rather ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... trade. In that same year Thomas Clarkson won the prize in a competition in Latin composition at Cambridge upon the assigned subject, "Whether it is right to enslave others against their will." His essay immediately became a standard authority among opponents of the trade and the institution. A greater consequence was that Clarkson himself was so inspired he devoted his life to the cause of the blacks. In 1787 a "Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade" was organized. It ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Captain Marquart, or the like, to consult:—of which Retzow, in his splenetic Opposition humor, does not see the tragedy, but rather the comedy: how the poor Captains found their favor to be temporary, conditional, and had to collapse again. One of them wrote an "ESSAY on the COUP-D'OEIL MILITAIRE," over which Retzow pretends to weep. This was Friedrich's marginal Note upon the MS., when submitted to his gracious perusal: "You (ER) will do better to acquire the Art of marking Camps ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... source, is praise indeed. Moreover, it is not pretended that our little troupe of amateurs presented a perfect performance. Others of longer experience and of far more pretentious character had not done this. Nor was or is such a thing possible; for, as Pope says in his "Essay on Criticism," ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and his nature correspond. If he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions to the friend ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... tendency, it is the mode by which collective activity manifests and exercises itself, the expression of social spontaneity, the emblem of democracy and equality, the most energetic instrument for the constitution of value, the support of association. As the essay of individual forces, it is the guarantee of their liberty, the first moment of their harmony, the form of responsibility which unites them all ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... novelist have proceeded beyond the statistics of sacrilege, which, however, he has collected carefully, and these in themselves constitute a strong presumption. M. Huysman is exhaustive in fiction and reticent in essay-writing, yet he gives us to understand explicitly that the infamous Canon Docre of La Bas is actually living in Belgium, that he is the leader of a "demoniac clan," and, like the Count de St Germain, is in ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... first essay at bedtime stories met with such approval that this second book of "Sandman" tales was issued for scores of eager children. Life on the farm, and out-of-doors, is portrayed in his ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... directness about this verdict upon a rival historian which we shall probably persist in calling "Saxon"; but it is no worse than the criticisms of Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Celtic Spirit" made to-day by university professors who happen to know Old Irish at first hand, and consequently consider Arnold's opinion on Celtic matters to ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Reeve,[Footnote: Written in pencil.]—I am laid up with a very sudden and sharp attack of the enemy; but I must write a line from bed to say how more than satisfied I am by the article in the Review, which goes straight to the main points of my Essay, and which distinguishes exactly those which best deserve notice. I am the more grateful as all the others I have seen—whether laudatory or not—have all been the production of ignorant men who did ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an answer, for Hintock was dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he would be out of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... novelist would at once have become bombastic and conceited at being the cause of such a universal upheaval—not so Spout. He retired quite quietly to his cosy kitchenette apartment in Harlem and wrote that charming and winsome essay in sentiment "Mollie's Holiday"—which in due course he followed with his celebrated treatise on reincarnation "A Drop of Blood" and "To Horse, to Horse" a stirring romance ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... enough; and he exuded a number of sounds that made a fair stagger at arranging themselves into language. It was English he aimed at, and when his system of syntax reached your mind it wasn't past you to understand it. If you took a college professor's magazine essay and a Chinese laundryman's explanation of a lost shirt and jumbled 'em together, you'd have about what the General handed you out for conversation. He told me all about his bleeding country, and what they were trying to do ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to his book. With a mild amusement he saw that it had opened of itself at an essay, by Abraham Cowley, on "Greatness" and its penalties: "Out of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, which is, that no greatness can be satisfied or contented with itself; still, if it could mount up a little higher, it would be happy; if it could not gain that point, it would ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his subtle essay which prefaces my brother's little book of poems, speaks of the complete subjugation of his will. If I may venture to express a different view, I do not feel that Hugh ever learned to efface his own will. I do not think his temperament, was ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in Modern Music. First Series. Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner. With an Essay on Music and Musical Criticism. With Five Portraits. Crown ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... little essay adds any information upon a subject of much public interest, and contributes to the just settlement of a very important question, I shall consider my labor has not been ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... "Your first essay in giraffe-hunting has been very successful," said Swinton, laughing, as they came up ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... carve for you. This comparison will hold, Could it well in rhyme be told, How conversing, listening, thinking, Justly may resemble drinking; For a friend a glass you fill, What is this but to instil? To conclude this long essay; Pardon if I disobey, Nor against my natural vein, Treat you in heroic strain. I, as all the parish knows, Hardly can be grave in prose: Still to lash, and lashing smile, Ill befits a lofty style. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Wells faces this fact in that extremely stimulating essay on 'Scepticism of the Instrument,' which he has appended to his Modern Utopia. His answer is that the difficulty is 'of the very smallest importance in all the practical affairs of life, or indeed in relation to anything but philosophy and wide generalisations. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... cause to be laid before you an essay toward a statement of those who, under public employment of various kinds, draw money from the Treasury or from our citizens. Time has not permitted a perfect enumeration, the ramifications of office being too multiplied and remote to be completely ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... extravagant. This fact alone will mean the retention of the lecture system, wherever it can possibly be employed with success. (2) It is educationally the better method, for the average student and the average teacher. For the reconstruction of a lecture from notes means an essay in original work, in original thinking; while the recitation lapses all too readily into ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... bad ones, took the good ones, and sent them flying to all parts of the field. The scouts were hot and tired; the bowlers were changed and bowled till their arms ached; but Dumkins and Podder remained unconquered. Did an elderly gentleman essay to stop the progress of the ball, it rolled between his legs or slipped between his fingers. Did a slim gentleman try to catch it, it struck him on the nose, and bounded pleasantly off with redoubled violence, while the slim gentleman's eyes filled with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sometimes as plainly on the surface, but I have often delved at less accessible quarries. For instance, I owe the celestial vision of "The Master of the Name" to a Hebrew original kindly shown me by my friend Dr. S. Schechter, Reader in Talmudic at Cambridge, to whose luminous essay on the Chassidim, in his Studies in Judaism, I have a further indebtedness. My account of "Maimon the Fool" is based on his own (not always reliable) autobiography, of which I have extracted the dramatic essence, though in the supplementary ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that skill in blindfold play is not an absolute test of similarly relative powers over the board: e.g. Blackburne and Zukertort can play as many as sixteen, or even twenty, blindfold games at a time, and win about 80 per cent of them at least. Steinitz, who beats them both in match play, does not essay more than six blindfold at a time. Mason does not, to our knowledge, make any specialite at all ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... and this makes explicable to me the failure which I constantly perceive in his dramatic presentment of her whose "innocence" (as the term is conventionally accepted) is her salient quality. The type, immortal and essential, is one which a poet must needs essay to show; and Browning, when he showed it through others, or in his own person hymned it, found words for its delineation which lift the soul as it were to morning skies. But when words are further called upon for ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the poet to belong to his characters; and he had often said if he had been an actor he should have established quite a new method of playing several of them. He was now about to become an actor, and he resolved, in his very first essay, to introduce one of his novelties, or new readings. What this was, will be best explained in the following conversation, which took place between himself and Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... of Machiavelli's life is bounded by his books. He settled at his villa at San Casciano, where he spent his day as he describes in the letter quoted at the beginning of this essay. In 1518 he began to attend the meetings of the Literary Club in the Orti Oricellarii, and made new and remarkable friends. 'Era amato grandamente da loro ... e della sua conversazione si dilettavano maravigliosamente, tenendo ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... information's sake, she had so strong a desire of not appearing ignorant, as, with a good clear understanding, made her a most attentive, profitable, thankful pupil. Fanny was her oracle. Fanny's explanations and remarks were a most important addition to every essay, or every chapter of history. What Fanny told her of former times dwelt more on her mind than the pages of Goldsmith; and she paid her sister the compliment of preferring her style to that of any printed author. The early habit of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... into the copper a tidy lot of molasses, to sweeten the coffee; and so, when it was presently served out promptly at 'eight bells,' he won golden opinions in this his first essay at cooking, the men all declaring it prime stuff. I think, though, I ought to have had some of the credit of it, having lighted the fire and seen to everything save chucking in the coffee and molasses, which anybody else could have done quite ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... make and bid to New Comum's town-walls and Larian Shores adieu;" For I determined certain fancies he 5 Accept from mutual friend to him and me. Wherefore he will, if wise, devour the way, Though the blonde damsel thousand times essay Recall his going and with arms a-neck A-winding would e'er seek his course to check; 10 A girl who (if the truth be truly told) Dies of a hopeless passion uncontroul'd; For since the doings of the Dindymus-dame, By himself ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin—an essay, no doubt—"Does History consist of the Biographies of Great Men?" There were books enough; very few French books; but then any one who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... effect from Robinson's first essay on Friday. Canning has done remarkably well as yet, and gives great satisfaction. Nothing can prevent the mad war of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... past four years to be almost constantly in the field traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canadian border to the limits of Florida and getting so far as possible first-hand impressions of rural church and community conditions. It is the purpose of the present essay to discuss some of the general problems in rural life presenting themselves to the religious forces of America, and to note some conclusions as to the next steps to be taken if these forces are to render the service in rural advance that it is believed is theirs to render. Suggestions ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of Bliss. That which he considered chief, was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to the spirit of property. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... he will not lightly renew a tie which has not been lightly broken...These are a few of the Problems of Friendship, some of them suggested by the Lysis, others by modern life, which he who wishes to make or keep a friend may profitably study. (Compare Bacon, Essay ...
— Lysis • Plato
... attributed either to Julius Scheurl or J. Schwartzkopf (pp. [47]-65, in Latin). This seems to be the first printing of The description, which was published separately at Wolfenbuttel in 1653. John Pell's essay was written around 1630-34 and was prepared for publication in 1634 by Hartlib, but was only actually published as an addition to The Reformed Librarie-Keeper. It was of some importance in making mathematics better known ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... in the majority of cases, a man who fancies himself dying will get cold comfort from the very youthful view expressed in this essay. He, as a living man, has some to help, some to love, some to correct; it may be some to punish. These duties cling, not upon humanity, but upon the man himself. It is he, not another, who is one woman's son and a second woman's husband, and ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... few yards of the most western cascade, the ascent to the Breche is made. Without a guide, however, the precise spot would be exceedingly difficult to find; and from its forbidding nature, few would be bold enough to make the essay. It is literally a rock-ladder, and is the only locality in the wide sweep of the Cirque affording the means of ascent. The rugged strata, which are here vertical, serve as steps in which one can insert ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... Peak country, and afterwards wrote an account of his adventures in what he fondly believed to be the style of Geoffrey Crayon. The paper was printed in a local journal under the title of A Pedestrian Pilgrimage through the Peak, by Wilfrid Wendle. This was not William Howitt's first literary essay, some stanzas of his on Spring, written when he was only thirteen, having been printed in the Monthly Magazine, with his name ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... occurred to Madame Theodore that before calling on her brother Toussaint to try to borrow a franc from him, she might first essay her luck with her younger sister, Hortense, who had married little Chretiennot, the clerk, and occupied a flat of four rooms on the Boulevard de Rochechouart. This was quite an affair, however, and the poor woman only made ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... who are impelled by their own evolutional process to seek the development in themselves of these psychic powers; and to these a word of warning seems necessary, so that at the risk of appearing didactic I must essay the task. To some it may seem unwelcome, to others redundant and supererogatory. But we are dealing with a new stage in evolutional progress—the waking up of new forces in ourselves and the prospective ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... important fact: that as much depends on the public spirit, unity of action, and zeal of the early proprietors, as upon the locality itself. The one is useless without these helps. General Washington wrote an able essay to prove the availability of Norfolk, Va., as the great commercial metropolis of the country. He speculated upon its being the great market for the West. His imagination pictured out some such place as New York now is, as its future. The unequalled harbor of Norfolk, and the resources of the country ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... Revised from the Best Authorities with a Memoir and Essay on his Genius by Barry Cornwall, and Annotations on his Writings by many Distinguished Writers, 3 vols. imp. 8vo., half bound mor., marble edges, illustrated with numerous Engravings on Wood by Kenny Meadows. (An Early Subscriber's Copy) ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... to relate, even if I could recall them, all the various methods and devices which were suggested and rejected or tried and proved failures in the attempt to rescue the tankdrivers. Press and radio followed every daring essay and carefully planned endeavor until the last vicarious quiver had been wrung from a fascinated public. For twentyfour hours there was no room on the front pages of the newspapers for anything but the latest on the "prisoners ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... work. The introduction to the excellent translation of Balzac's novels undertaken by Mr. Saintsbury, contains a short account of his life, but this only fills a few pages and does not enter into much detail. Besides these, an admirable essay on Balzac has appeared in "Main Currents of Nineteenth-century Literature," by Mr. George Brandes; the scope of this, however, is mainly criticism of his merits as a writer, not description of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... summary of the relative values of exercise in the three different forms of communication through language was enunciated by Francis Bacon in his essay entitled Studies, published first in 1597: "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... to the character of Mr. Darwin's theory is Professor Huxley. We have some hesitation in including the name of this distinguished naturalist among the advocates of Darwinism.[19] On the one hand, in his Essay on the Origin of Species, printed in the "Westminster Review," in 1860, and reprinted in his "Lay Sermons," etc., in 1870, he says: "There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... night and bored him with a dreary recital of the prominence of his house in College politics, of the stump speeches that a former brother, now a historical personage, had made in Mayfield for prohibition, to say nothing of the essay prizes in philology that another ancient Phi had won in the dim past, when the chapter must have been more prominent than at present. In comparison with this record, the Rhos were numbskulls, dwelling in ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... of society as I now did, I knew little and cared less for these academic crises. The success of one candidate was as unimportant to me as the failure of another; and I had more than once read the crowned poem of the prize essay without even glancing at the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... because his character is always revealed in it. As we have already expressed certain generalities concerning his character under the headings, The Antique, Paganism, Friendship, and Beauty, the more detailed account deserves a place here, near the end of our essay. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... each year the body of a criminal. From thence, after becoming the fellow-pupil and the friend of Rondelet, and probably also of Rabelais and those other luminaries of Montpellier, of whom I spoke in my essay on Rondelet, he returned to Paris to study under old Sylvius, whose real name was Jacques Dubois, alias Jock o' the Wood; and to learn less—as he complains himself—in an anatomical theatre than a butcher might learn in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... granted, that a Christian is not bound to believe any Thing to have been of Divine Institution, that has not been declared to be such in Holy Writ. Yet great Offence has been taken at an Essay, in the First Part of the Fable of the Bees, call'd An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue; notwithstanding the great Caution it is wrote with. Since then, it is thought Criminal to surmise, that even Heathen Virtue was of Human Invention, and the Reader, in the following ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... believe that very few will presume to compare his philosophy in any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton. The former is an essay, the latter a masterpiece. But then the man who first brought us to the path of truth, was perhaps as great a genius as he who ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or amusement it can give by discarding the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... this name, are enrolled on his side; and he seldom has occasion to call a man his enemy. Kit Carson was so embarrassed and overcome by the expressions of kindness and hospitality which greeted his first arrival at Washington, that he could hardly essay a reply; and yet, he was almost too happy at the opportunity presented of accepting Mrs. Fremont's invitation. If there was anything wanted to cement Carson more firmly in his friendship and admiration for Colonel Fremont, it was thus to know his accomplished and gifted lady. The situation of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... things of the world, the propaganda of Tea met with opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville (1678) denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway (Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the use of tea. Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made it "regalia for high treatments and ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... this wholesale charge of ignorance and insensibility the excuse for an essay on the physiology of respiration, mostly extracted from Huxley's "Elementary Lessons in Physiology," and therefore excellent in its way, though having a somewhat remote bearing upon the subject as announced in the title ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... myself. It's funny we should both think the same; I knew we should if once we talked. But there are other things—love, now," he added. "I wonder if we would think alike about that. I wrote an essay on love once; the master said it was the best I ever wrote, and I can remember the first sentence still—'Love is something that you feel in ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... whom it would be advantageous to the nation to advance in position, or distinguish with honor, and aid by such reward as it should be the object of every Government to distribute no less punctually, and far more frankly, than it distributes punishment: (compare 'Munera Pulveris,' Essay IV., in paragraph on Critic Law), while the mere fact of permanent record being kept of every event of importance, whether disgraceful or worthy of praise, in each family, would of itself be a deterrent from crime, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... the beginning of the century was nothing like the number at the end, the process was steadily going on, often by non-parliamentary enclosure, and was approved by nearly every one. Some, however, were opposed to it. John Cowper, who wrote an essay on 'Enclosing Commons' in 1732, said, a common was often the chief support of forty or fifty poor families, and even though their rights were bought out they were under the necessity of leaving their old homes, for their occupation was gone; but he says nothing of the well-known increased demand ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... most profound contempt for woman whom they talked of as an animal made solely for their pleasure. Every moment they quoted Schopenhauer, who was their god, and his well-known essay "On Women;" they wished that harems and towers might be reintroduced, and had the ancient maxim: "Mulier, perpetuus infans,"[10] woven into their table-linen, and below it, the line of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... shall passing time essay To soothe the dire domestic pain; Fair Isobel becomes the prey Of that same demon of the brain. When autumn winds were sighing low, When birds were singing on the tree, Amidst their song she met the foe, And sank ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... assure yourself that I will be as regardful of everything that relates to him as you yourself could be. Considering how uncertain my situation is or where I may be at any particular period, had I known your intention in March, I should have recommended that he embarked then, and made his first essay in a warm ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... friend, Mr. W. F. Kirby, who contributed to the 10th volume of Sir Richard's Nights proper the very able Bibliographical Essay, has drawn my attention to an analogue of this tale in Geldart's Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: There were two brothers, one of whom was wealthy and had four children, who were in feeble health, the other was poor and had seven children, who were in robust health. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... an essay on the invasion of England and a treatise on gun-boats, full of valuable maritime information; in 1805 a treatise on yellow fever, suggesting modes of prevention. In short, he was an industrious and thoughtful man. He sympathized with the poor and oppressed of all lands. He looked ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... this period contain a large proportion of lines devoted to describing how wonderful everything is. The widespread conviction that whatever is, in the England of the late eighteenth century, is right, may have resulted from the influence of An Essay on Man. Or the Essay may have been popular because it expressed ideas already in general acceptance. But whatever the explanation is, the catch-phrases extracted from Pope's most popular work become the ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd |
