Literary Statesmen, and OthersDuckworth, 1897 - 208 páginas |
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Literary Statesmen and Others: Essays on Men Seen from a Distance Norman Hapgood Visualização integral - 1897 |
Literary Statesmen and Others: Essays on Men Seen from a Distance Norman Hapgood Visualização integral - 1897 |
Palavras e frases frequentes
Abbott Thayer admirable American artist attitude Balfour beauty belief Berlioz Beyle Beyle's character charm color criticism culture distinction Edmond de Goncourt element ennui essays expression facts Farge feeling French French compound genius give happiness Henry James human ideas imagination individual instincts intellectual intelligence interest irony judgment Julien KENYON COX kind lack less letters liquid song literary literature living logic Lord Rosebery Madame du Deffand ment Mérimée Mérimée's Michelangelo mind Molière moral Morley Morley's nature ness never painters painting passage passion perhaps phatic philosophy phrase picture point of view political praise principles qualities reader says sceptical seems seldom sense shows sincerity sion soul speak Stendhal stories style subtlety Suetonius suggestion sympathy talk taste technical tell things thought Tintoretto tion Titian tone traits truth virtues Voltaire whole Winslow Homer woman words writing young
Passagens conhecidas
Página 58 - It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to know that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations.
Página 55 - We hear much indeed of what is called ' idle curiosity,' but I am loth to brand any form of curiosity as necessarily idle. Take, for example, one of the most singular, but, in this age, one of the most universal, forms in which it is accustomed to manifest itself: I mean that of an exhaustive study of the contents of the morning and evening papers. It is certainly remarkable that any person who has nothing to get by it should destroy his eyesight and confuse his brain by a conscientious attempt to...
Página 7 - The uneasy whisper circulated, and the joints of the lords became as water. The peers, who yearned for lieutenancies or regiments, for stars or strawberry leaves ; the prelates, who sought a larger sphere of usefulness ; the minions of the bedchamber and the janissaries of the closet ; all, temporal or spiritual, whose convictions were unequal to their appetite, rallied to the royal nod.
Página 29 - It is thus assured that from the beginning Condorcet was unable to satisfy himself with the mere knowledge of the specialist, but felt the necessity of placing social aims at the head and front of his life, and of subordinating to them all other pursuits. That he values knowledge only as a means to social action is one of the highest titles to our esteem that any philosopher can have.
Página 14 - We feel ourselves part of the mourning crowd. We hear those dropping volleys and that muffled drum ; we bow our heads as the coffin passes, and acknowledge with tears the inevitable doom. Pass, heavy hearse, with thy weary freight of shattered hopes and exhausted frame ; pass, with thy simple pomp of fatherless bairns and sad moralising friends ; pass, with the sting of death to the victory of the grave ; pass, with the perishable, and leave us the eternal. It is rare to be fortunate in life ; it...
Página 198 - It was not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled, submissive admiration; Roderick's smile fell dead, and he sat eagerly staring. A pair of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass of dusky hair over a low forehead, a blooming oval of perfect purity, a flexible lip, just touched with disdain, the step and carriage of a tired princess — these were the general features of his vision. The young lady...
Página 35 - ... intelligence, and a warm and steadfast glow of social feeling, when a man has learnt how little the effort of the individual can do either to hasten or direct the current of human destiny, and yet finds in effort his purest pleasure and his most constant duty. If we owe honour to that social endeavour which is stimulated and sustained by an enthusiastic confidence in speedy and full fruition, we surely owe it still more to those, who knowing how remote and precarious and long beyond their own...
Página 38 - The pedant, cursed with the ambition to be a ruler of men, is a curious study. He would be glad not to go too far, and yet his chief dread is lest he be left behind. His consciousness of pure aims allows him to become an accomplice in the worst crimes. Suspecting himself at bottom to be a theorist, he hastens to clear his character as a man of practice by conniving at an enormity.
Página 58 - His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile,...
Página 198 - There had been an earlier vision, but it had turned to grey, like faded ink, and the occasion I speak of was a fresh beginning. No doubt I had mystic prescience of how fond of the murky modern Babylon I was one day to become; certain it is that as I look back I find every small circumstance of those hours of approach and arrival still as vivid as if...