What sunk me very low was the sensation that I was precisely as when in wretched low spirits thirty years ago, without any additio...n to my character from my having had the friendship of Dr. Johnson and many eminent men, made the tour of Europe, and Corsica in particular, and written two very successful books. I was as a board on which fine figures had been painted, but which some corrosive application had reduced to its original nakedness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »
For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness ...in the stomach, and other inconveniences.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over... the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And yet no greater, but more eminent, Love by the spring is grown;... As, in the firmament, Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown, Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough, From love's awakened root do bud out now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,... The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing... it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the eve of a revelation."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers..., we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is--Imbecility: imbecili...ty in the vast majority of men, at all times, and even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments: victims of gravity, customs and fear. This gives force to the strong,--that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »