Best Thoughts of Best Thinkers: Amplified, Classified, Exemplified and Arranged as a Key to Unlock the Literature of All Ages

Front Cover
Best thoughts publishing Company, 1904 - 643 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 199 - I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence And portance in my travels...
Page 199 - With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of ? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...
Page 199 - To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life...
Page 68 - Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor - one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Page 199 - To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.
Page 138 - That to the observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not.
Page 199 - And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of link-ed sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running ; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of Harmony : That Orpheus...
Page 199 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature...
Page 193 - From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world...
Page 215 - And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

Bibliographic information