The Works of Samuel Johnson ...: Miscellaneous pieces

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Talboys and Wheeler, 1825
 

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Page 68 - This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his lov'd mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd The air is delicate.
Page 67 - Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear ; And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown'd withal.
Page 72 - Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.
Page 115 - His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct that he seems to write without any moral purpose.
Page 153 - I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him...
Page 64 - If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir. Ban. New honours come upon him Like our strange garments ; cleave not to their mould, But with the aid of use. Macb. Come what come may ; Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Page 90 - She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Page 56 - To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament : and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws; which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.
Page 105 - ... are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained...
Page 66 - Thus thou must do, if thou have it And that which rather thou dost fear to do Than wishest should be undone.

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