Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man's life may be best written... by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity--a good strong figure. But I think it ...is rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about bei...ng put out of their jobs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days, Even the sacred moments when we played,... All innocent of passion, uncorrupt, At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,--the history of Jerus...alem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills,--think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust some things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with which they preach Christianity still. What are time and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and a new world?--that the humble life of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New York bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre; a church-bell ringing; some unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In another's sentences the thought, though it may be immortal, is as it were embalmed, and does not strike you, but here it is so ...freshly living, even the body of it not having passed through the ordeal of death, that it stirs in the very extremities, and the smallest particles and pronouns are all alive with it. It is not simply dictionary it, yours or mine, but IT.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another t...hing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It would be but a wretched compliment of condolence to offer to a queen of China, or Japan, or India, Scythia, or Gothia, who had ...just lost her infant son to say: "Be comforted, madam; his highness the prince royal is now in the clutches of five hundred devils, who turn him round and round in a great furnace to all eternity, while his body rests embalmed and in peace within the precincts of your palace." The astonished and terrified queen inquires why these devils should eternally roast her dear son, the prince royal. She is answered that the reason of it is that his great-grandfather formerly ate of the fruit of knowledge in a garden. Form an idea, if possible, of the looks and thoughts of the king, the queen, the whole council, and all the beautiful ladies of the court.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »