Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English man of War;... Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid but Slow in his performances. Shakespeare with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I will frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature... than I had ever before entertained. But alas! since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope o...f bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses ...mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing, ...never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just before reaching the lighthouse, we saw the sun set in the Bay,--for standing on that narrow cape was, as I have said, like be...ing on the deck of a vessel, or rather at the masthead of a man-of-war, thirty miles at sea, though we knew that at the same moment the sun was setting behind our native hills, which were just below the horizon in that direction. This sight drove everything else quite out of our heads, and Homer and the Ocean came in again with a rush,-- Ev d' epes' Okeanoi lampron phaos eelioio, the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A monarchy is like a man-of-war--bad shots between wind and water hurt it exceedingly; there is a danger of capsizing. But democra...cy is a raft. You cannot easily overturn it. It is a wet place, but it is a pretty safe one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »