Table-talk: or, Original essays (a selection).1825 |
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abstract acquaintance artist beauty better Blenheim body brain breath cerned character colours common Correggio delight dity Domenichino dream Elgin Marbles ESSAY existence face fame fancy feel future genius give greatest hand head heart honour honour among thieves human idea idle ignorant imagination impressions indifferent instance interest knowledge labour landscape learned Leonardo da Vinci live Llangollen look Louvre matter mighty mind names nature never NICOLAS POUSSIN notions object once opinion OTHELLO ourselves pain paint painter pass passion past perhaps person picture pleasure poet Poussin prejudice profes pursuit quarto question racter reason Rembrandt Rob Roy Salisbury Plain sense shew sight sort speak spirit style talk taste terest testator thing thou thought tion Titian truth ture turn understand vices whole wish
Popular passages
Page 53 - O God! methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain ; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run, How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live.
Page 141 - ONE of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. The fields his study, nature was his book. I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time.
Page 144 - ... heart set in its coat of emerald? Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself and indulge your reveries. But this...
Page 141 - I praise the Frenchman,* his remark was shrewd — How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude ! But grant me still a friend in my retreat,. Whom I may whisper — solitude is sweet.
Page 120 - On some fond breast the parting soul relies; Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,— Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
Page 152 - Common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas — at other times when there have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I think it was), where I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons...
Page 156 - ... shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren country I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one.
Page 147 - Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ; Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells ; Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells ; Choose where thou wilt...
Page 182 - The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together : our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.
Page 146 - Now, I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before...