Encyclopaedia Britannica; Or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, Volume 15

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Archibald Constable, 1823 - Encyclopedias and dictionaries
 

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Page 77 - O, speak again, bright angel ! for thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Page 108 - For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.
Page 358 - And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud : for he is a god ; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
Page 165 - But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish : so he paid the fare thereof and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Page 73 - If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind as upon a ' mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination.
Page 66 - Among the various reasons why we prefer one part of her works to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and custom : custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black white ; it is custom alone determines our preference of the colour of the Europeans to the .(Ethiopians, and they, for the same reason, prefer their own colour to ours.
Page 42 - ... the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the usage of the Church of England...
Page 73 - It is therefore not a sufficient vindication of a character that it is drawn as it appears; for many characters ought never to be drawn: nor of a narrative, that the train of events is agreeable to observation and experience; for that observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
Page 75 - ... while it is supported by either parts or spirit, it will be seldom heartily abhorred. The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared; and there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits. It is therefore to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts, that it begins in mistake, and ends in...
Page 73 - For this reason these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will...

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