The Quarterly Review, Volume 99

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John Murray, 1856 - English literature

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Page 350 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 249 - He said it that knew it best ; and had by nature himself no advantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator, which is but superficial, and rather the virtue \ of a player, should be placed so high above those other noble parts of invention, elocution, and the rest : nay almost alone, as if it were all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature, generally, more of the fool than of the wise ; and therefore those faculties by which the foolish part of mens...
Page 434 - For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heaven and earth : And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems...
Page 249 - Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy ; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it : but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when perhaps they find the contrary within : for they are the first that find their own griefs, though they b>e the last that find their own faults.
Page 73 - You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated the light. I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true; I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me.
Page 236 - I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.
Page 237 - ... that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age ; that now nothing was left to a writer but that species of the marvellous, which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way ; that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, .and in extraordinary situations...
Page 237 - ... which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way, — that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals.
Page 73 - I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

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