Familiar Quotations - - (a book to read txt) 📗
- Author: -
- Performer: -
Book online «Familiar Quotations - - (a book to read txt) 📗». Author -
[363]
To sun myself in Huncamunca's eyes.
Tom Thumb the Great. Act i. Sc. 3.
Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of the two dogs meets;
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.[363:1]
Tom Thumb the Great. Act i. Sc. 6.
I am as sober as a judge.[363:2]
Don Quixote in England. Act iii. Sc. 14.
Much may be said on both sides.[363:3]
The Covent Garden Tragedy. Act i. Sc. 8.
Enough is equal to a feast.[363:4]
The Covent Garden Tragedy. Act v. Sc. 1.
We must eat to live and live to eat.[363:5]
The Miser. Act iii. Sc. 3.
Penny saved is a penny got.[363:6]
The Miser. Act iii. Sc. 12.
Oh, the roast beef of England,
And old England's roast beef!
The Grub Street Opera. Act iii. Sc. 2.
This story will not go down.
Tumble-down Dick.
[364]
Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?
Tom Jones. Book iv. Chap. iv.
Distinction without a difference.
Tom Jones. Book vi. Chap. xiii.
Amiable weakness.[364:1]
Tom Jones. Book x. chap. viii.
The dignity of history.[364:2]
Tom Jones. Book xi. Chap. ii.
Republic of letters.
Tom Jones. Book xiv. Chap. i.
Illustrious predecessors.[364:3]
Covent Garden Journal. Jan. 11, 1752.
[362:1] The incense of the heart may rise.—Pierpont: Every Place a Temple.
[363:1]
Thus when a barber and a collier fight,
The barber beats the luckless collier—white;
The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack,
And big with vengeance beats the barber—black.
In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread,
And beats the collier and the barber—red:
Black, red, and white in various clouds are tost,
And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost.
Christopher Smart: The Trip to Cambridge (on "Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets," vol. vi. p. 185).
[363:2] Sober as a judge.—Charles Lamb: Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon.
[363:3] See Addison, page 300.
[363:4] See Heywood, page 20.
[363:5] Socrates said, Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.—Plutarch: How a Young Man ought to hear Poems.
[363:6]
A penny saved is twopence dear;
A pin a day 's a groat a year.
Franklin: Hints to those that would be Rich (1736).
[364:1] Amiable weaknesses of human nature.—Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xiv.
[364:2] See Bolingbroke, page 304.
[364:3] Illustrious predecessor.—Burke: The Present Discontents.
I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men. . . . In receiving from the people the sacred trust confided to my illustrious predecessor.—Martin Van Buren: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1837.
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 1708-1778.Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.
Speech, Jan. 14, 1766.
A long train of these practices has at length unwillingly convinced me that there is something behind the throne greater than the King himself.[364:4]
Chatham Correspondence. Speech, March 2, 1770.
Where law ends, tyranny begins.
Case of Wilkes. Speech, Jan. 9, 1770.
Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations.[364:5]
Letter to the Earl of Shelburne, Sept. 29, 1770.
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,—never! never! never!
Speech, Nov. 18, 1777.
[365]
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,—but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!
Speech on the Excise Bill.
We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.
Prior's Life of Burke (1790).
[364:4] Quoted by Lord Mahon, "greater than the throne itself."—History of England, vol. v. p. 258.
[364:5] "Indemnity for the past and security for the future."—Russell: Memoir of Fox, vol. iii. p. 345, Letter to the Hon. T. Maitland.
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.[365:1]
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 1.
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,—
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 159.
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 221.
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know
That life protracted is protracted woe.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 257.
An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 293.
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 308.
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 316.
[366]
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 345.
For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.
Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 362.
Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.[366:1]
London. Line 166.
This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,—
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.[366:2]
London. Line 176.
Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.
Prologue to the Tragedy of Irene.
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre.
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre.
For we that live to please must please to live.
Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre.
Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!
Life 's a short summer, man a flower;
He dies—alas! how soon he dies!
Winter. An Ode.
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
Verses on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet. Stanza 2.
In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh[366:3]
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.
Verses on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet. Stanza 5.
And sure th' Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.
Verses on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet. Stanza 7.
[367]
Then with no throbs of fiery pain,[367:1]
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way.
Verses on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet. Stanza 9.
That saw the manners in the face.
Lines on the Death of Hogarth.
Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love!
Rest here, distressed by poverty no more;
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!
Epitaph on Claudius Philips, the Musician.
A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,
Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,
And touched nothing that he did not adorn.[367:2]
Epitaph on Goldsmith.
How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
Lines added to Goldsmith's Traveller.
Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay.
Line added to Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,—
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.[367:3]
Motto to the Rambler. No. 7.
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who [368]expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow,—attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince Of Abyssinia.
Rasselas. Chap. i.
"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
Rasselas. Chap. iii.
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Rasselas. Chap. xii.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Rasselas. Chap. xii.
Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.[368:1]
Rasselas. Chap. xiii.
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Rasselas. Chap. xvi.
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Rasselas. Chap. xvi.
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
Rasselas. Chap. xvii.
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Rasselas. Chap. xxx.
The endearing elegance of female friendship.
Rasselas. Chap. xlvi.
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.[368:2]
Preface to his Dictionary.
Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.[368:3]
Boulter's Monument. (Supposed to have been inserted by Dr. Johnson, 1745.)
[369]
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Life of Addison.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Life of Milton.
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
Life of Milton.
His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.
Life of Edmund Smith (alluding to the death of Garrick).
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.
Journey to the Western Islands: Inch Kenneth.
He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
The Idler. No. 57.
What is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
The Idler. No. 74.
Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation;
Comments (0)