The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., LL.D.: Late President of the Royal Society, Foreign Associate of the Royal Institute of France, &c. ...

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H. Colburn an R. Bentley, 1831 - 547 pages

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Page 456 - ... power, wit, or fancy ; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, 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...
Page 11 - I see, men's judgments are A parcel of their fortunes ; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike.
Page 464 - A day with not too bright a beam, A warm, but not a scorching sun, A southern gale to curl the stream, And, master, half our work is done.
Page 487 - Cannon and fortifications now form an impregnable barrier against the Tartar horse; and Europe is secure from any future irruption of barbarians, since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
Page 342 - I have enough for all my views and purposes ; more wealth might be troublesome, and distract my attention from those pursuits in which I delight; — more wealth,' he added, ' could not increase either my fame or my happiness. It might, undoubtedly, enable me to put four horses to my carriage ; but what would it avail me to have it said that Sir Humphry drives his carriage and four?
Page 458 - ... who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily ; and as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it •were for the gaudy...
Page 113 - Christabel unfinished, and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions, sublime, but unconnected with the real world ! I have looked to his efforts, as to the efforts of a creating being ; but as yet, he has not even laid the foundation for the new world of intellectual forms.
Page 466 - All the instances of omens you have mentioned are founded on reason ; but how can you explain such absurdities as Friday being an unlucky day, the terror of spilling salt, or meeting an old woman ? I knew a man, of very high dignity...
Page 205 - The Bakerian Lecture, on some of the Combinations of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygen, and on the Chemical Relations of these Principles to inflammable Bodies.
Page 4 - Cloyne, and the celebrated Dr. Parr, were his principal associates. They divided the fields in the neighbourhood of Harrow, according to a map of Greece, into states and kingdoms: each fixed upon one as his dominion, and assumed an ancient name. Some of their school-fellows consented to be styled barbarians, who were to invade their territories and attack their hillocks, which were denominated fortresses. The chiefs vigorously defended their respective domains against the incursions of the enemy;...

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