When Sir Robert Walpole had quitted the administration [as prime minister] in 1742 ... he went to dine with Mr. Lee Warner at Wals...ingham. After dinner a very aged clergyman ... desired to be presented to him, and then told Sir Robert that he had been his first schoolmaster in his infancy ... and had then from his early parts foretold his future greatness ... what an instance of beautiful disinterestedness! ... in twenty years that [Sir Robert's] administration lasted, the honest minister of Walsingham ... had never claimed his scholar, nor let him know of his own existence, till Sir Robert had lost all power of serving him!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Sir Robert Walpole was dying, he told Ranby his surgeon that he desired his body might be opened. Ranby acting great horror c...ried, "Good God, my Lord, don't talk of that!" "Nay," said Sir Robert, "it will not be till I am dead, and that I shall not feel it--nor you neither."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the f...irst the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind--men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh--who founded the English colonies in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As we looked off, and saw the water growing darker and darker and deeper and deeper the farther we looked, till it was awful to co...nsider,... I felt that I was a land animal.... I could then appreciate the heroism of the old navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, of whom it is related, that being overtaken by a storm when on his return from America, in the year 1583, far northeastward from where we were, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, just before he was swallowed up in the deep, he cried out to his comrades in the Hind, as they came within hearing, "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land." I saw that it would not be easy to realize.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise,... First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty mad...e my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper a...rrangement of the various parts of the speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that co...mbination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are four classes of idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names--calling the first ...class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"But, first a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;... Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »