the works of samuel johnson

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1823

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Página 498 - Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together.
Página 505 - Imlac,) I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth...
Página 418 - Johnson wrote it, that with the profits he might defray the expense of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he composed it in the evenings of one week ; sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it orer. 1 Mr. Strahan, Mr. Johnston, and Mr. Dodsley, purchased it for a hundred pounds ; but afterwards paid him twentyfive pounds more, when it came to a second edition.
Página 539 - The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
Página 453 - What would dare to molest him who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty or assisted by his power? And why should not life glide quietly away in the soft reciprocation of protection and reverence? All this may be clone without the help of European refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather specious than useful. Let us leave them and pursue our journey.
Página 310 - Here will I hold. If there's a power above us (And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works) he must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.
Página 153 - In a prison, the awe of the public eye is lost, and the power of the law is spent ; there are few fears, there are no blushes. The lewd inflame the lewd, the audacious harden the audacious. Every one fortifies himself as he can against his own sensibility, endeavours to practise on others the arts which are practised on himself ; and gains the kindness of his associates by similitude of manners.
Página 319 - What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common nature.
Página 423 - His attendants observed the change, and endeavored to renew his love of pleasure : he neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the. branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage and some sleeping among the bushes.
Página 468 - The causes of good and evil, answered Inilac, " are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating.

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