The Great and Eccentric Characters of the World, Their Lives and Their Deeds, Representing All Ages and All Countries: Comprising Heroes, Conquerors, Statesmen, Authors, Artists, Humorists, Misers, Mountebanks, Kings, Queens, Jugglers, Etc., Etc. and Other Curiosities of Human Nature

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Hurst & Company, 1877 - Biography - 799 pages
 

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Page 516 - I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel ; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.
Page 654 - It appeared to me like entering a city of giants who, after a long conflict, were all destroyed, leaving the ruins of their various temples as the only proofs of their former existence.
Page 526 - I went over to France with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat ; and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature.
Page 558 - I find his Grace my very good Lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singularly favour me as any subject within this realm ; howbeit, son Roper, I may tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof ; for if my head would win him a castle in France (for then there was war between us) it should not fail to go.
Page 188 - Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to the end of the world.
Page 517 - The doctor, having first asked him if he could bear the whole truth, which way soever it might lead, and being answered that he could, declared that, in his opinion, he could not recover without a miracle. " Then," said Johnson, " I will take no more physic, not even my opiates ; for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded."^) In this resolution he persevered, and, at the same time, used only the weakest kinds of sustenance.
Page 627 - Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who before he became an author had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects...
Page 529 - Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
Page 668 - ... quarrels; you will be obliged for maintenance to do any thing for any body; your very talents will depart for want of hope and encouragement, and you will go out of the world fretted, disappointed, and ruined.
Page 494 - I assure you, my dear sir, that you truly hurt me with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it would savour of affectation ; but as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that honour which crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns's integrity — on the least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-past transaction, and from that moment commence entire stranger to you.

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