Since I am upon this Subject, I must observe that our English Poets have succeeded much better in the Stile, than in the Sentiment...s of their Tragedies. Their Language is very often noble and sonorous, but the sense either very trifling or very common. On the contrary, in the ancient Tragedies, and indeed in those of Corneille and Racine, tho' the Expressions are very great, it is the Thought that bears them up and swells them. For my own part, I prefer a noble Sentiment that is depressed with homely Language, infinitely before a vulgar one that is blown up with all the Sound and Energy of Expression. Whether this Defect in our Tragedies may arise from Want of Genius, Knowledge, or Experience in the Writers, or from their Compliance with the vicious Taste of their Readers, who are better Judges of the Language than of the Sentiments, and consequently relish the one more than the other, I cannot determine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precook...ed out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a... life is to go on asking them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and I should relish every hour and what it brought me, ...the pot-luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,... never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She had no longer any relish for her once favorite amusement of reading. And mostly she disliked those authors who have penetrated... deeply into the intricate paths of vanity in the human mind, for in them her own folly was continually brought to her remembrance and presented to her view.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. An...yway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had fathered every folly, every sin. No goat knew gluttony like his, no cat had felt his pride, no crow his avarice. He had sai...d the psalm against envy, the psalm against anger, the psalm against sloth and the loss of hope, but they were no defense.... Without moderation or charity, without relish or enthusiasm, he'd led a wanton, heedless, selfish life. In meanness, in darkness and squalor of spirit, he had passed his time. Faithless he'd professed a faith. Faithlessly, he'd preached.... Even now he made himself a monster, overblew his vices so his charge would lack conviction. Was that not the mark of a monster?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Faced with even a temporary delay or absence, children pound and scream and bawl; but as soon as the situation changes, they are b...afflingly sunny, and take their gratification with relish, or feel secure again when mother returns. It is said that "children cannot wait," but just the contrary is true. It is children who can wait, by making dramatic scenes (not otherwise than religious people get through hours of stress by singing hymns). They have a spontaneous mechanism to cushion even minor troubles. Rather it is the adults who have inhibited their spontaneous expression, who cannot wait; we swallow our disappointment and always taste what we have swallowed. For where the occasions of passion occur, where there is actual frustration and misery, and yet anger and grief are not explosively released, then the disposition itself is soured, and such happiness as follows is never full and unclouded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man ...do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »