Self-cultivation in English and The Glory of the ImperfectCrowell, 1898 - 64 páginas |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Self-cultivation in English: And The Glory of the Imperfect George Herbert Palmer Vista completa - 1917 |
Términos y frases comunes
Accuracy and dash acquired America Arnold attention beauty and distinction beginning botany command contribute cultivate Death insults delight diction distinguished divine discontent dull ease English language English literature English study enlarged exactitude excellence eyes fact feel friends GEORGE HERBERT PALMER glory grace graph ction graph Greek Greek literature growth Harvard University hearer Herodotus Homer looked human character IMPERFECT BY GEORGE intellectual interest are beauty Jesus joy of perfecting larger literary power live matter mean mense interest ment merely mind never niggardly noble speaker object observe opportunities ourselves passion for perfection perfect home persons piece portant possess precepts precision seek the interests SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH sentence Shakespeare single thing Speaking or writing speech literature stand sympathize talk teaches thought tion to-day tongue tool trained uncon uninteresting land utterance verses wealth whole wish Woman's College words worth young
Pasajes populares
Página 15 - Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech, but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke ; and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion.
Página 55 - To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect — how else? they shall never change: We are faulty— why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn...
Página 19 - English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage all the picturesque, imaginative, and forceful employment of words is sacrificed. Of course we must use words so that people can understand them, and understand them, too, with ease ; but this once granted, let our language be our own, obedient to our special needs. "Whenever...
Página 10 - It is commonly supposed that when a man seeks literary power he goes to his room and plans an article for the press. But this is to begin literary culture at the wrong end. We speak a hundred times for every once we write. The busiest writer produces little more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have command of his language or not.
Página 20 - English to make strenuous and systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand words. The average speaker employs about three thousand. Is this because ordinary people have only three or four thousand things to say ? Not at all. It is simply due to dulness. Listen to the average school-boy. He has a dozen or two nouns, half a dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglomerate together. This ordinary...
Página 59 - I have often meditated on that, but it seems to come to about this: Homer looked long at a thing. Why, do you know that if you should hold up your thumb and look at it long enough you would find it immensely interesting ? ' Homer looks a great while at his thumb.
Página 14 - XX' 3 .X'Obviously, good English is exact English. Our words should fit our thoughts like a glove, and be neither too wide nor too tight. If too wide, they will include much vacuity beside the intended matter. If too tight, they will check the strong grasp.
Página 17 - Accordingly if we would have our speech forcible, we shall need to put into it quite as much of audacity as we do of precision, terseness, or simplicity. Accuracy alone is not a thing to be sought, but accuracy and dash. It was said of Fox, the English orator and statesman, that he was accustomed to throw himself headlong into the middle of a sentence, trusting to God Almighty to get him out. So must we speak. We must not, before beginning a sentence, decide what the end shall be ; for if we do,...
Página 11 - The busiest writer produces little more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently, through speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have command of his language or not. If he is slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one piece, and the same being runs through a multitude of performances. Whether words are uttered on paper or to the...
Página 18 - ... Supposing we are convinced that words possess no value in themselves, and are correct or incorrect only as they truly report experience, we shall feel ourselves impelled in the mere interest of accuracy to choose them freshly, and to put them together in ways in which they never cooperated before, so as to set forth with distinctness that which just we, not other people, have seen or felt. The reason why we do not naturally have this daring exactitude is probably twofold. We let our experiences...