The Bee and Other Essays

Voorkant
Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1914 - 416 pagina's

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Pagina 43 - Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve ! Poor houseless creatures ! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief.
Pagina 42 - There will come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room. What cities as great as this have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded, and with short-sighted presumption promised themselves immortality. Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others ; and as he beholds he learns wisdom,...
Pagina 328 - Death ! thou pleasing end of human woe ! Thou cure for life ! thou greatest good below ! Still may'st thou fly the coward and the slave, And thy soft slumbers only bless the brave.
Pagina 265 - Nor is this rule without the strongest foundation in nature, as the distresses of the mean by no means affect us so strongly as the calamities of the great. When tragedy exhibits to us some great man fallen from his height, and struggling with want and adversity, we feel his situation in the same manner as we suppose he himself must feel, and our pity is increased in proportion to the height from which he fell. On the contrary, we do not so strongly sympathize with one born in humbler circumstances,...
Pagina 153 - By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would permit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously pleased to call the first floor down the chimney; and knocking at the door, a voice from within demanded, who's there?
Pagina 265 - ... object. The principal question therefore is. whether in describing low or middle life, an exhibition of its follies be not preferable to a detail of its calamities? Or, in other words, which deserves the preference — the weeping sentimental comedy, so much in fashion at present, or the laughing and even low comedy, which seems to have been last exhibited by Vanbrugh and Gibber?
Pagina 42 - What a gloom hangs all around ! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam ; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten ; an hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity. There will come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room.
Pagina 42 - ... pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease ; the world has disclaimed them ; society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty.
Pagina 43 - ... of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny ; and every law which gives others security becomes an enemy to them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility ! , or why was not my fortune adapted to its impulse ! Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues...
Pagina 286 - Being questioned about the meaning of so strange an item, he frankly declared, that happening to overhear a poor man declare to his wife and a large family of children, that £10 would make him happy, he could not avoid trying the experiment.

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