Imaginary conversations

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Nimmo and Bain, 1883

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Page 389 - There is no excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell, whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions, the other by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one Excellent.
Page 386 - ... certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another:, he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation.
Page 381 - Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not: but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
Page 385 - ... specially to thy king and country. It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth. For that only stands fast upon his own centre; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens, move upon the centre of another, which they benefit.
Page 389 - Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
Page 387 - ... wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, "That speech was like cloth of arras, opened and put abroad; whereby the imagery doth appear in figure ; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.
Page 394 - Certainly, fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid...
Page 58 - IT is the first mild day of March : Each minute sweeter than before, The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare And grass in the green field.
Page 234 - There wanted yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature, who, not prone • And brute as other creatures, but endued With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven...
Page 118 - Fendent les flots tremblants sous un si noble poids. Louis, les animant du feu de son courage, Se plaint de sa grandeur qui l'attache au rivage.

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