51 common use are both the most liable, from the looseness of ordinary discourse, to slide from one sense into another, and also the least likely to have that ambiguity suspected. Familiar acquaintance is perpetually mistaken for accurate knowledge. EXTRAVAGANT ANTITHESES. Whewell. Ceux qui font les antithèses en forçant les mots sont comme ceux qui font de fausses fenêtres pour la symmétrie. Leur régle n'est pas de parler juste, mais de faire des figures justes. Pascal. DEFINITION. All arts acknowledge that then only we know certainly, when we can define; for definition is that which refines the pure essence of things from the circumstance. Milton. TEDIOUS WRITERS. A tedious writer is not one who uses too many words, but one who uses many words to little purpose. Where the sense keeps pace with the words, though these be numerous, or drawn out into long periods, I am not tired with an author; but when his expression goes on while the sense stands still, I am out of patience with him. Bishop Hurd. MODERN AUTHORS. Die originalsten Autoren der neuesten Zeit sind es nicht deßwegen, weil sie etwas Neues vorbringen, sondern allein weil sie fähig sind dergleichen Dinge zu sagen, als wenn sie vorher nie gesagt gewesen. Goethe. YOUNG AUTHORS. Les jeunes écrivains donnent à leur esprit beaucoup d'exercise et peu d'aliments. Joubert. COMMENTARIES. Il y a plus affaire à interpreter les interpretations, qu'à interpreter les choses; et plus de livres sur les livres que sur aultre subject: nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. Montaigne. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. Le plaisir propre de la comédie est dans le rire, et celui de la tragédie dans les larmes. Mais il faut, pour l'honneur du poète que le rire qu'il excite soit agréable, et que les larmes soient belles. Il faut, en d'autres termes, que la tragédie et la comédie nous fassent rire et pleurer décemment. Ce qui force le rire et ce qui arrache les larmes n'est pas louable. Joubert. BEATING ABOUT FOR THE RIGHT WORD. Un bon auteur et qui écrit avec soin éprouve souvent que l'expression qu'il cherchait depuis longtemps sans la connaître, et qu'il a enfin trouvée, est celle qui est la plus simple, la plus naturelle, qui semblait devoir se présenter d'abord et sans effort. La Bruyère. 54 LANGUAGE. Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking. Sir H. Davy. WORDS. Men believe that their reason is lord over their words, but, it happens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal and reactionary power over our intellect. Words, as a Tartar's bow, shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment. Bacon. WORDS AND THINGS. A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. But wise men pierce this rotten diction, and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the groundline of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion, or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watches his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought,-which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Emerson. SCIENCE AND POETRY. Science sees Signs; Poetry, the thing signi fied. U. PAINTING. Painting is the intermediate something be tween a thought and a thing. Coleridge. |