Fifty celebrated men: their lives and trials [&c.].

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David C. Cook, 1862 - 311 pages

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Page 257 - A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
Page 281 - I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness — creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish ; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights ; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity : makes an instrument of torture and...
Page 46 - That very law* which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course.
Page 182 - ... to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries.
Page 30 - I AM old and blind! Men point at me as smitten by God's frown; Afflicted and deserted of my kind, Yet I am not cast down. I am weak, yet strong; I murmur not that I no longer see; Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong, Father Supreme! to thee.
Page 290 - Society ; the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Glasgow in 1806; and in 1808 he was elected a member of the French Institute.
Page 288 - ... with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro Frank — all are as...
Page 28 - I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions...
Page 151 - I know not by what despondency, or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it; so that there was nothing heard, or seen, but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods ; such a strange consternation there was upon them...

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