Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that "reap" and "deep," "...prayers" and "bears," "ark" and "dark," "true" and "grew" do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be i...mpossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.... The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you g...ood thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great practical difference between the word, written or spoken, and the visual image is that we cannot read the former unless ...we have been initiated into the mystery of language, whereas visual images can be made intelligible to all men who have eyes.... The spiritual difference between the written word and the visual image is equally great. Precise though a word is, evocative though it be, the actual machinery of visual perception is not engaged. All that takes place, takes place now within the mind; the retina and the neurons sleep; we are in a world which has been created by old, long-stored stimuli; the accidents of energy exterior to ourselves have been totally excluded from it. Even the spoken word is further from this spiritual purity than the word upon the page, for sounds have at least a sensual immediacy of a sort, but the written word is only the ghost of a sound. We have entered now into a realm not of images but of substitutes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"The unities, sir,' he said, "are a completeness--a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time--a sort of gene...ral oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Graces naked danced about the place, The winds and trees amazed... With silence on her gazed, The flowers did smile, like those upon her face; And as their aspen stalks those fingers band, That she might read my case, A hyacinth I wished me in her hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tell my son how anxious I am that he may read and learn his Book, that he may become the possessor of those things that a grateful... country has bestowed upon his papa--Tell him that his happiness through life depends upon his procuring an education now; and with it, to imbibe proper moral habits that can entitle him to the possession of them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His Majesty enquired if he was then writing any thing. He answered, he was not, for he had pretty well told the world what he knew..., and must now read to acquire more knowledge.... Johnson said, he thought he had already done his part as a writer. "I should have thought so too, (said the King,) if you had not written so well."--Johnson observed to me, upon this, that "No man could have paid a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a King to pay. It was decisive." When asked ... whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, "No, Sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelle...d me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »