"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... examination found Ling alternately elated or depressed, according to the length and style of the essay which he had written while enclosed in his solitary examination cell. The trials each lasted a complete day, and long before the fifteen days which composed the full examination were passed, Ling found himself half regretting ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... 80th year. After going through the ordinary course of education at Gottingen, and having made a rapid tour through Holland, England, and France, he became a pupil of Werner at the mining school of Freyburg, and in his 21st year published an "Essay on the Basalts of the Rhine." Though he soon became officially connected with the mining corps, he was enabled to continue his excursions in foreign countries, for, during the six or seven years succeeding ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... we would have wished him to have followed.' He takes the words but and humour. One part of his definition of humour is curious—'something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.' This essay has not, I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the bards; to ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... treatment, the able essay by Rev. G.E. Ellis, in Winsor's seventh volume, is especially rich in bibliographical references. See also Sabine's Loyalists of the American Revolution, 2 vols., Boston, 1864; Ryerson's Loyalists of America, 2 vols., Toronto, 1880; ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... practical utility in the higher classes of schools. It seems desirable that before pupils begin to write essays, imaginary dialogues, speeches, and poems, they should receive some instruction as to the difference of arrangement in a poem, a speech, a conversation, and an essay. ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... An Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils, and the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Generally Held during the Period of the Reformation, and the Times Immediately Succeeding; with Special Reference to Shakspere and ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... you please." Here Landis' self-confidence forsook her. She could not believe it possible that any girl would be generous enough to keep to herself such a matter as that of the essay-copying. Should Elizabeth tell but one or two, the affair would soon become public property. Her name would be mentioned with scorn throughout Exeter. Already she saw herself ostracized as she had helped to ostracize ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... know something about the Cape Horn he passed in the Spray" at which a lad of nine or ten years stepped nimbly forward and read Basil Hall's fine description of the great cape, and read it well. He afterward copied the essay for me in a ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. It is the promise and purpose of a great work. But a prosaic change seems to come over his half-ideal character. The lover ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... me by pleading the cause of the duke. He had no right to ask you to do such a thing, and you were unwise to essay such a task. I have punished you by mystifying ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... Snaith is already known to fame by his historical novels, his admirable cricketing story, his essay in Meredithan subtlety "Brooke of Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy "Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... my translation of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night will remember that, in the terminal essay (1884) on the history and character of the collection, I expressed my conviction that the eleven (so-called) "interpolated" tales, [1] though, in my judgment, genuine Oriental stories, had (with the exception of the Sleeper Awakened and Aladdin) no connection with the original ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... games, when thou contendedst with my courtiers. When Lopt made his essay, the fact was this: he was very hungry, and ate voraciously; but he who was called Loge, was FIRE, which consumed the trough as well as the meat. And Huge (mind) was my THOUGHT with which Thjalfe ran a race, and it was impossible for him to match it in speed. When thou drankest from the horn, and ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London." The independent testimony of Archdeacon ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... Then follows an essay on oratory. It made me grin from end to end. Yet, as on the repeating of a comic story, it is hard to get the sting and rollic on the tongue. And much quotation on a page makes it like a foundling hospital—sentences unparented, ideas abandoned of their proper text. "Where grief is to be expressed," ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the door thereof, but the peasants were all at a loss because now to them pertained no leader; yet did they urge one another on saying that it were shame not to avenge their chief, but for all that did they naught, & made no essay to fight. Then went the King out to his men, set them in array, & caused his banner to be unfurled, but made he no onset & thereafter bade he all his men go out to his ship, then rowed they down the river and so ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... Geste a great discovery has been made since my essay was written; the Chanun de Willame, an earlier and ruder version of the epic of Aliscans, has been printed by the unknown possessor of the manuscript, and generously given to a number of students who have good reason to be ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... am not going to write an essay on the geology of the West, for I really have little first-hand knowledge upon that subject, but I would indicate the kind of interest in the country I was most conscious of during my recent trip to the Pacific ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Holland we must ascribe the discovery of the art of printing, for the original inventor was Laurentius John Coster, of Haerlem, who made his first essay with wooden types about the year 1430. The art was communicated by his servant to John Faust and John Guttenberg, of Mentz. It was carried to perfection by Peter Shoeffer, the son-in-law of Faustus, who invented the modes of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... against the measure, had made up your mind on full view of them, and that there could be little hope of changing the result. Pursuing my reflections, too, I knew we were some day to try to walk alone, and if the essay should be made while you should be alive and looking on, we should derive confidence from that circumstance and resource if it failed. The public mind, too, was then calm and confident, and therefore in a favorable state for making the experiment. Had no change of circumstances ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... little credit for originality. He stood to them in the light of a commentator on Aristotle, and as presenting the opinions of the Alexandrian and other philosophical schools up to his time. The following excerpts from the "Historical Essay on Averroism," by M. Renan, will show how closely the Sarscenic ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... United States"; then that great monument of intellectual achievement in the realm of historical criticism, Von Holtz's "Constitutional History of the United States." Books like Douglass Campbell's remarkable production, Fisher's convincing yet novel essay, and other like serious and original works, too numerous to properly ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... composition is probably the hardest task that can be set before a schoolboy. It was safe to say that in many cases a whipping would be gratefully preferred. But for the disgrace of the thing, Bert would certainly rather at any time have taken a mild whipping than sit down and write an essay. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... important a position it holds among the Buddhist books can be well imagined from the fact that over twenty commentaries were written on it both by the Chinese and the Japanese Buddhist scholars. It is said that a short essay under the same title by a noted contemporary Confucianist scholar, Han Tui Chi (Kan-tai-shi, who flourished 803-823), suggested to him to write a book in order to make clear to the public the Buddhist view on the same subject. Thus be entitled the book 'Origin of Man,' in spite of ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... medium, stone, color, word or tone, must exhibit unity of general effect with variety of detail. That is, the material must hold together, be coherent and convince the participant of the logical design of the artist; not fall apart as might a bad building, or be diffuse as a poorly written essay. And yet, with this coherence, there must always be stimulating and refreshing variety; for a too constant insistence on the main material produces intolerable monotony, such as the "damnable iteration" of a mediocre prose work or the harping away on one theme by the hack composer. In no art ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... This essay was read before the Ethnological Society February 19, 1845. Brief notices are given of the more important tribes, and the languages are classed in two groups, the Eskimaux and the Kolooch. Each of these groups is found ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... during the Lesson, to the line of sculptured Statesmen in the north transept. He had taken History honours, and his thoughts began to play with matter still stored in them: an essay on Dizzy and Cobden he had written for a Cambridge club—or Gladstone's funeral, which he had seen as a boy of seventeen. He had sat almost in this very place, with his mother, who had taken pains to bring him to see it as an historic spectacle ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had really lost very little, was inconsolable because her "essay," to be read at Commencement, had been burned up, and departed for ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... my youth, with whom it would be hopeless to attempt competition, have described the star-strewn journey to the moon. It is not for me to essay again where the ingenious M. Jules Verne and Mr. William Morris have preceded me. Besides, the journey is nowadays much more usual, and therefore much less adventurous, than when those revered writers first described it. In the middle ages a journey ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... unpretending." Three months later it was, "Poor Raspe is arrested by his tailor. I have sent him a little money, and he hopes to recover his liberty, but I question whether he will be able to struggle on here." His "Essay on the Origin of Oil Painting" was actually published through Walpole's good service in April 1781. He seems to have had plans of going to America and of excavating antiquities in Egypt, where he might have done good service, but the bad name that he had earned ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... What is lost? The revelation this page was to afford. The essay which was to have stood here upon page 127 of my book: ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... friendship with Newman to that great man's association with Hurrell Froude. Many years after, when Freeman had venomously accused him of "dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost forgotten fame"—poor Froude's offence was that he dared to write an essay on Thomas a Becket—he defended himself with rare emotion against the charge. "I look back upon my brother," he said, "as on the whole the most remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any person—not one—in whom, as I now think him, the excellences of intellect ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... essay on "Old Rome and New France," Miss Cleveland calls the Middle or Dark Ages, the Twilight Age. "It seems to me," she says, "that this period is not suggestively named when called the Middle Ages, nor accurately ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... the end of January, Henry Clay, though he had come back to the scene of his many stirring conflicts in the past minded to be "a calm and quiet looker-on," roused himself to one more essay of that statesmanship of compromise in which he was a master. He made a plan of settlement that covered all the controversies and put it in the form of a series of resolutions. It was to admit California with her free-state constitution; to organize the remainder ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... Will, speaks of this work as The American Crisis, remembering perhaps that a number of political pamphlets had appeared in London, 1775-1776, under general title of "The Crisis." By the blunder of an early English publisher of Paine's writings, one essay in the London "Crisis" was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued to cause confusion. This publisher was D. I. Eaton, who printed as the first number of Paine's "Crisis" an essay taken from the London publication. But his prefatory note says: "Since the printing of this book, the publisher ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... climate had an influence upon human physiognomy did not originate with the London Company. In an essay dating back to the fifth century B.C. and preserved among the works of the Hippocratic school the ancient—but in the seventeenth century still influential—authorities argued that human physiognomies could be classified into the well-wooded and well-watered mountain type; the thin-soiled ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... thought worthy of being illustrated by numerous and ample commentaries. Crescimbeni Ist. della Volg. Poes. l. v. For a playful sonnet which Dante addressed to him, and a spirited translation of it, see Hayley's Essay on Epic Poetry, Notes to ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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 ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... breathe a more deserving lay, A lay which every spirit would inspire, And melt each eye to tears of sympathy; But others at thy shrine, their tributes pay. Offspring of Beauty! child of native song! And I, ev'n I, would venture to essay, To raise my lauding voice amidst the throng Of those who weep thy loss—and who shall weep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... was always conscious of renewed vital power and of keener sensations. I would try the experiment once more—hazarded under circumstances so different that it made me tremulous but to think of the vast abyss between my now and then—and essay, to magnetize Mrs. Clayton. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, Zum ewigen Frieden. Many things have happened since then, although the Peace to which he looked forward with a doubtful hope has not been among them. But many things have happened which the great critical philosopher, and no less critical spectator of human events, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... life. He had never, in all his career, found it necessary to stoop. Office had sought him; he had not begged it, nor manoeuvred for it, nor crept towards it—arts which too frequently bring a man, morally bowed and degraded, to a position which should be one of dignity, but in which he will vainly essay to stand upright. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him for all those centuries till Sallier, that learned priest, pacing, full of his Hebrew and Syriac, the rooms of the royal library which Louis XV had but lately given him to govern, found the manuscript of the poems and wrote an essay on ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... as to dare to write remarks upon a French author. If Madame Cottin's "Malvina" be in English, you wish it speedily reviewed, and can possibly have any doubt of the truth of my present report, please to send it me; and whatever may be the contents, I will immediately essay my abilities on the work, or immediately return it as ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... spiritual care, with the advantage of a liberal education. In this attempt twenty-four men and twenty women have been engaged, selected from among those who have most thoroughly practiced our social theory." [Footnote: "Essay on Scientific Propagation," by John ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... gate, that swung with a chain and a great stone; its pantry window, latticed with little brown slabs, and looking out upon a forest of bean poles. You remember the zephyrs that used to play among its pea brush, and shake the long tassels of its corn patch, and how vainly any zephyr might essay to perform similar flirtations with the considerate cabbages that were solemnly vegetating near by. Then there was the whole neighborhood of purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; there were the billows of gooseberry bushes rolled up by the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I am very recognizing[23] that you guard 47 sous for my Christmas. Alas, I can never enough say thank you for all you do, and I can never render it to you! It make me full of sorry when I think that. With Maman I essay to guess what you want I do. I will make something with my proper hands, and Maman will aid. You will love a pair of slippers embroidered, or a shawl (I want say a scarf) or a bonnet of aviator? Tell me, I pray ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... Meckel, in 1811, devoted a long essay to a detailed proof of the parallelism between the embryonic states of the higher animals and the permanent states of the lower animals. In a previous memoir in the same collection[148] (i., 1, 1808) he had made some comparisons of this kind in dealing with the development of the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Frederick Alexander Armstrong. After its rehearsal, a young gentleman read a prose Essay on Education. It was clever, and indicated a mind of a high order, but was too playful; and the performance was severely criticised. Here ended the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... assert that God created the Americans. Not a metaphysical writer of eminence has escaped the 'imputation' of Atheism. The great Clarke and his antagonist the greater Leibnitz were called Atheists. Even Newton was put in the same category. No sooner did sharp-sighted Divines catch a glimpse of an 'Essay on the Human Understanding' than they loudly proclaimed the Atheism of its author. Julian Hibbert, in his learned account 'Of Persons Falsely Entitled Atheists,' says, 'the existence of some sort of a ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... point of stress, refused to give them back. There were sheaves of old receipted bills—among them one for the set of parlor furniture in the best (or the worst) style of the Second Empire. There were drafts of Raymond's early compositions—his first attempts at the essay and the short story; there was an ancient, heavily annotated Virgil (only six books), and there was a sheepskin algebra in which he had taken, by himself, a post-school course as a means of intellectual tonic, with extra problems ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... openly dispute the will of her father, neither would she essay to do it before Lionel Verner. She turned somewhat unwillingly towards the staircase, and Dr. West opened the drawing-room door, signing ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... reading; but which it is sincerely trusted may be of practical {6} utility. If it only induces thought, study, or research, by intellectual and honest minds, its object will have been attained. The writer can only claim the indulgence of the reader to consider the essay suggestive—not didactic. Many a far abler pen may enlarge upon and carry out the ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... said to the credit of Hung Wu, he will ever be remembered in connection with a form of evil which has eaten into the very heart of the nation. This was the system of triennial examinations, or rather the form of Chinese composition, called the "Essay," or the "Eight Legs," which, for the first time in the history of Chinese literature, was made the basis of all literary contests. It was so-named, because after the introduction of the theme the writer was required to treat it in four ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... preference, or conscious guiding of the judgment; and then, order in disorder, a harmony more properly musical than logical, a separating and return of many elements, which end by making a pattern. Take that essay of Elia called Old China, and, when you have recovered from its charm, analyse it. You will see that, in its apparent lawlessness and wandering like idle memories, it is constructed with the minute care, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... say that I was equally delighted with the warmth of the reception accorded to my essay, and with the revelation the letters appeared to contain of a sincere and unselfish nature. My purpose, however, which was a modest one, had been served, and I made no further attempt to continue the correspondence, least ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the scriptures were not to be spiritually understood but by the means of this spirit. He believed also, that human learning was not necessary for the qualification of a minister of the Gospel. And he wrote an essay against tithes.] ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... ridgy, spiral spire are the three most descriptive words, but these are not half enough for stating the shape, style and posture of this strange steeple. It is difficult even to assist the imagination to form an idea of it. I will essay a few words in that direction. Suppose, then, a plain spire, 100 feet high, in the form of an attenuated cone, planted upon a heavy church tower. Now, in imagination, plough this cone all around into deep ridges ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... good sense, careful observation, and deep research, are displayed in every page. The introductory essay of some seventy or eighty pages forms a valuable addition to the work. It comprises an abstract of the opinions advocated by the most eminent writers on this subject. The statements are made with strict impartiality, and, without a comment, left ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... absolutely forfeiting his claim to orthodox Christianity. I refer not all to your maintenance of apostolic succession, but to your unqualified reprobation of the motives, feelings, and character of all who are not of your own fold. How different are the sentiments and spirit of Bishop Onderdonk's essay in support of the "Divine Right of Episcopacy" from those of your articles in the last Church? Now, though we may be without the attributes of what you believe to be a scripturally constituted Church, we are not without the attributes and feelings of men.... The apparatus of the Church of England ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... 27, No. I, brings us before a masterpiece. With the possible exception of the C minor Nocturne, this one in the sombre key of C sharp minor is the great essay in the form. Kleczynski finds it "a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of murder, the sea closes over a corpse and continues to serve as a mirror to the moonlight." This is melodramatic. Willeby analyzes it at length with the scholarly ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the beautiful vessel as it ploughed through the peaceful ocean. She listened to the gurgle of the miniature waves until the sigh of the night wind came and reminded her it was time to go home. These occasions were made memorable by the use they were put to. Many a subject for a new essay that was to be sent over the seas found its text on the lonely stretch of sand. Sometimes a shrewd hint was dropped in by the way that his communications must have miscarried, and that there was a painful longing to see his handwriting once again. "I cannot imagine you wilfully or negligently ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... them," he said, "affords a proof of the efforts of our earliest ancestors to provide for their wants, and to obtain the necessaries of life." He added that after the re-peopling of the earth after the deluge, men were ignorant of the use of metals. Mahudel's essay is illustrated by drawings, some of which we reproduce (Fig. 1), showing wedges, hammers, hatchets, and flint arrow-beads taken, he tells ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... his heart of silver hue, In vain essay'd her bosom to congeal: She heard inflamed the shrieking voice of Woe, And cry of owls along the sadden'd vale. She shook the pointed spear, On high she raised her shield; Her foemen all appear, And fly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... sparkling review of a new book the writer had just read, and passed from this to crisp comments on the great events, political, scientific, artistic, of the day. The whole letter was pungent, interesting, delightful—an impersonal essay on a dozen vital topics of life and thought. Only at the end was a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to any one who talked with serving-men; The houses ruled by women-folk—these I avoided most; And when policemen seemed to have me almost in their ken, I stood stock-still and acted just exactly like a post. A hundred such manoeuvres did I constantly essay, And by such means succeeded in ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... Fortnightly Review, which was reprinted in her "Critical Studies," was the first account in English of the author and his work. In the main, although besprinkled with moral asides, it is, with one exception, as good an essay as any that has since been written on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was such that the only work of his which will become known to the English public in general will be the Vergini delle Rocce, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the beach by St. Augustine,—in evening party at Pottsville,—and at the parish sociable in Northfield? Then you are sure of the benefits which will crown your lives if you obey these three precepts; and you will, with unfaltering step, move quickly over the kettle-de-benders of this broken essay, and from the thistle, danger, will pluck the three more flowers which I have promised. I am to teach ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... the labours of the day by writing a short essay or theme on some religious subject. In doing this I have two objects in view: the improvement of my mind and heart. And what could be more appropriate than to close the day by reflection upon God, and heaven, and time, and eternity? ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... sense of magnitude. He writes to a distinguished scholar, asking a number of burdensome questions, and is apparently under the impression that the resources of the scholar's mind, the fruits of boundless industry, should be cheerfully placed at his disposal. A woman who meditates a "literary essay" upon domestic pets is not content to track her quarry through the long library shelves. She writes to some painstaking worker, enquiring what English poets have "sung the praises of the cat," and if Cowper ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... only say to you ze passage is block up vis big stone, ze hole vere ze seal live is no good—ze rock hang over ze wrong vay. You try to climb, and you are not ze leetler mouche—fly. You fall and die; and if you essay to svim, ze sharp tide take you avay to drown. Go and svim if you like: I sall not have ze pain to drown you. But, my faith! vy do I tell you all zis? You bose know zat you cannot get avay now ze passage is stop up vis stone, and I stop him vis a man who has sword and pistol as vell. ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... trial has fully confirmed, a sketch of this man, to which I still adhere. He was furnished to Booth and John Surratt from Canada; sent upon special service with his life in his hands; and he faced the murder he was to commit like any prize-fighter. I pity Beall, who died intelligently for a wretched essay against civilians, that his biography and fate must be matched ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... fortunately gifted. Indeed, compared either with Wilson's welter of words, now bombastic, now gushing, now horse-playful, or with the endless and heartbreaking antitheses of what Brougham ill-naturedly but truly called "Tom's snip-snap," it is infinitely preferable. The conclusion of the essay on Theodore Hook is not easily surpassable as an example of solid polished prose, which is prose, and does not attempt to be a hybrid between prose and poetry. The last page of the Tennyson review is ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... exclaimed, "you would not say so if you had ever used it." —"Why, my dear sir," said I, "I made tons of superphosphate, and used large quantities of guano before you were born; and if you will come into the house, I will show you a silver goblet I got for a prize essay on the use of superphosphate of lime, that I wrote more than a quarter of a century ago. I sent to New York for two tons of guano, and published the result of its use on this farm, before you were out of your cradle. ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... this, I have in mind a little essay of great charm and value by Coventry Patmore on "Modern Ideas of Purity," which goes deeper into the fundamentals of morality than any other modern work on the subject. And, by the way, having read "The Age of Innocence," "Main Street," "Moon Calf," "Miss Lulu Bett," and several other novels, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... who may desire to see the matter clearly and ably handled would do well to read the Essay on "The Being of God," in Lux ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... ought to be the attitude of educated girls and women towards pleasures, the usual pleasures of society? Certainly not the cynical one—"Life would be tolerable if it were not for its pleasures." Pleasures do make up, and ought to make up, a considerable portion of life. Now I have no time for an essay on pleasures. I will only offer two remarks. One is that the pleasure open to all cultivated women, even in the pleasures that please them least, is the pleasure of giving pleasure. Go to give pleasure, not to get it, and that converts anything into a pleasure. The other ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... variations, multitudinous as they are, but little is known with perfect accuracy. I will mention to you some two or three cases, because they are very remarkable in themselves, and also because I shall want to use them afterwards. Reaumur, a famous French naturalist, a great many years ago, in an essay which he wrote upon the art of hatching chickens,—which was indeed a very curious essay,—had occasion to speak of variations and monstrosities. One very remarkable case had come under his notice of a variation in the form of a human member, in the person of a Maltese, of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... right, I have felt it myself,' said her sister-in-law. 'Perhaps something could be done by essay societies. May belongs to one, and if Ursula is an intellectual girl, perhaps you could keep her up to some regular employment in the morning. I succeeded in doing so when May came out, but I can accomplish nothing regular but music with ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... am gratified at the terms in which you speak of my roughly-written 'Essays on Land Drainage.' If you have not seen my published letter to Lord Berners, and my recent essay 'On the Advantages of a Daily Record of Rain-fall,' I should much like you to look over them, for my object in both has been to check the uniformity of treatment which too much prevails with those who are officially called upon to direct draining, and who still treat mixed soils ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... I remember his telling me that a single short story of his, called 'The Vengeance of Vera Dalrymple,' had been instrumental in securing no less than thirty perfect specimens. Poor George! I was with him when he made his first attempt on the Scrutinizer. He had baited his hook with an essay on Evolution. He read me one or two passages from it. I stopped him at the third paragraph, and congratulated him in advance, little thinking that it was sympathy rather than congratulations that he needed. When I saw him a week afterwards he was looking haggard. I questioned ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Spenser was his master, and the full charm of Comus cannot be realised without reference to the artistic and philosophical spirit of the author of the Faerie Queene. Both poems deal with the war between the body and the soul—between the lower and the higher nature. In an essay on 'Spenser as a philosophic poet,' De Vere says: "The perils and degradations of an animalised life are shown under the allegory of Sir Guyon's sea voyage with its successive storms and whirlpools, its 'rock of Reproach' strewn with wrecks and dead men's ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Satire and Epic Poetry belong to the latter years of his life, and represent maturer thought than is to be found in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesie." That essay, published in 1667, draws its chief interest from the time when it was written. A Dutch fleet was at the mouth of the Thames. Dryden represents himself taking a boat down the river with three friends, one of them his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard, another ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... few stupid ones who had very little brains to be proud of; so they used to try and make up for the lack by telling us about such things; but we reckoned a good essay writer worth a good deal ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... whilst the local manager, who rather prided himself on his ability as an orator, deplored the serious and sudden indisposition of that established favourite, Mr. Bannister, and announced that Mr. Armstrong had 'gallantly stepped into the breach,' and would essay the part, literally at a moment's notice. Paul would most certainly have ungallantly bolted out of the breach had that been possible; but the people cheered the local manager cordially, and he, stepping back into the gloom of the stage, found Paul shivering there, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... laughed, not a hearty laugh, to be sure. A tiny nose and a tail gracefully curled were brushing against him. The source of the disturbance was a little Maltese cat, his favourite, that by some chance had remained in his room. After its essay at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... digression, almost a social essay in fact; but I have it so much at heart to dissuade fathers and mothers from sending their sons so far away without any certainty of employment. Capitalists, even small ones, do well in New Zealand: ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... first historic occasion the meeting was conducted by Johnson W. Shoals, president, in a very dignified manner. An interesting annual report was read by the secretary, James G. Shoals, Fidelia Murchison read an essay on gardening and Elsie Shoals-Arnold, one on making and marketing butter. The author indulged in a short address and other addresses were delivered by Simon Folsom, Lee V. Bibbs, Charles Bashears and Mitchell Stewart. The principal address however, was by Isaac Johnson, one of their number living ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... rode quietly along, sometimes allowing her horse to prance upon the turf for the delight of its dewy freshness, she was weaving quite a brilliant essay on modern morals out of the scene she had witnessed at the Church of the Lorette that morning. She well knew how to use that dangerous weapon, the pen,—she could wield it like a wand to waken tears or laughter with ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... severe a criticism of human nature in general, and of our times in particular. In any case, we can not accept the statement as correct, when applied to noble characters to whom we especially dedicate this work. It may be, the reader will find in our essay beauties which he had not yet observed, which have hitherto been disputed in the original, and which less sympathetic natures than ours might term complacent eulogies; but the fear of being blamed and of being unpopular shall not deter us from our intention of bringing ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... answered, "I will not wait for it. But do thou show me what place lies Emain [1]Macha."[1] [2]"Northwards, there;[2] it is far away from thee," said his mother, "the place wherein it lies, [3]and the way is hard.[3] Sliab Fuait lies between thee and Emain." "At all hazards, I will essay it," he answered. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... inherent similarity was obscured by superficial differences resulting from dissimilar economic and social conditions." This statement does not appear as extravagant to-day as it did ten years ago. As early as 1894, Captain Mahan, the great authority on naval history, published an essay entitled "Possibilities of an Anglo-American Reunion," in which he pointed out that these two countries were the only great powers which were by geographical position exempt from the burden of large ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... general literature. Would the ability to discuss with intelligence the Bengal Regulation of 1818, or the British Guiana Immigration Ordinance of 1891 be welcomed as a set-off to a complete unfamiliarity with Milton's "Comus" and Gladstone's essay on the ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... an admirable style and, though arranged without apparent method, a system of political philosophy may be gathered from their contents. Thus the third essay, That Politics may be reduced to a Science, defends that thesis, and dwells on the importance of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... among its members almost every lawyer of eminence who has appeared since that year, including Sir William Follett and Mr. J.W. Smith. He entered this society on the 29th January, 1834; and I well recollect his first essay at addressing it. It was upon the discussion of a legal question. He was evidently very nervous when he rose, for the colour quite deserted his cheek. His manner was cold, dry, and formal, and sufficiently uninteresting, and uninviting. We were all, however, soon struck by the book-like precision ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... keen insight into the essentials of literature led him to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latest period of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in his masterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele as bridled by his friend, and does ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the highest faculty, even though less developed, that gives rank to nature, rather than a lower faculty more developed. Although it was in later years that the impression Shelley made upon his boyhood found adequate expression in his noted essay, the spell reflected itself in "Pauline," and is to be distinctly traced in many of his poems throughout his entire life. He was aware from the first of that peculiarly kindling quality in Shelley, the flash ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the poets and on the age of Elizabeth, and the Spirit of the Age, and the first edition of the Comic Writers, the Plain Speaker, and the Political Essays. A slight departure from this procedure in the case of the essay on "Elia" is explained in the notes. "My First Acquaintance with Poets," and "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen" are taken from the periodicals in which they first appeared, as they were not republished in book-form till after Hazlitt's death. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Essay on Milton with the desire to get at the real truth about Milton, whether as a man or a poet, will feel that the essay in nowise helps him. A reader who only wants rhetoric, a reader who wants a panegyric on Milton, a panegyric on the Puritans, will find what he wants. A reader who ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... called admirable tact and discretion in an old stager who did not want to commit himself to anybody or to anything. On the whole, the display became creditable, at least as an evidence of thoughtful reserve, rare in a man so young; too refining and scholastic for oratory, but a very good essay,—upon both sides of the question. Randal wiped his pale forehead and sat down, cheered, especially by the lawyers present, and self-contented. It was now Leonard's turn to speak. Keenly nervous, as men of the literary temperament ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... herausgegeben von H. A. Keller, Tuebingen, 1836, p. cxxxviii.; Dyocletianus Leben, von Hans von Buehel, herausgegeben von A. Keller, Quedlinburg und Leipzig, 1841, p. 45. All students of this subject are acquainted with Domenico Comparetti's masterly essay Ricerche intorno al Libro di Sindibad, Milan, 1869, which has recently been made accessible to English readers in a version published by the English Folk-Lore Society in 1882. The Persian and Arabic texts may be consulted ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then, haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while the little dog looked up at her anxiously, she dipped a white, uncertain foot into the water—and as she hesitated to essay the yielding mud, and the slimy things under the stones, she heard the returning splash of wading feet. A minute later the three youngsters appeared, Edith's skirts now very well above the danger line ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... not"—this was not merely a complimentary form of speech, for Mahommed, it should be borne in mind, was himself deeply versed in the intricate and subtle science of planetary prediction—"we are agreed that as thou art to essay the war as its beginner, we should have the most favorable Ascendant, determinable by the Lord, and the Planet or Planets therein or in conjunction or aspect with the Lord; we are also agreed that the Lord ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace |
