British Thought and Thinkers: Introductory Studies, Critical, Biographical and Philosophical

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S. C. Griggs, 1880 - Biography & Autobiography - 388 pages

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Page 308 - Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Page 112 - Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Page 106 - If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions ; but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.
Page 250 - I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours...
Page 108 - tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens ; to the which our wills are gardeners : so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce ; set hyssop, and weed up thyme ; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many ; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry ; why, the power and corrigible authority...
Page 111 - Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of hahit's devil, is angel yet in this; That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock, or livery, That aptly is put on : Refrain to-night ; And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence : the next more easy : For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency.
Page 112 - Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ; Or close the wall up with our English dead ! In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility : But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger...
Page 105 - How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, If his chief good, and market of his time, Be but to sleep, and feed ? a beast, no more.
Page 180 - But God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational...
Page 99 - O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses ; But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, Die to themselves.

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