From a College Window

Twelve of the essays included in this volume appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_. My best thanks are due to the proprietor and editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_ for kind permiss...

The sun flares red behind leafless elms and battlemented towers as I come in from a lonely walk beside the river; above the chimney-tops hangs a thin veil of drifting smoke, blu...

The one room in my College which I always enter with a certain sense of desolation and sadness is the College library. There used to be a story in my days at Cambridge of a book...

I have a friend here, an old friend, who, in refreshing contrast with the majority of the human race, possesses strongly marked characteristics. He knows exactly the sort of lif...

What is really most needed in social gatherings is a kind of moderator of the talk, an informal president. Many people, as I have said, are quite capable of talking interestingl...

Neither does it seem to be an intellectual process; because it comes in the same self-willed way, alike when one's mind is deeply engrossed in congenial work, as well as when on...

I always feel that the instinct for beauty is perhaps the surest indication of some essence of immortality in the soul; and indeed there are moments when it gives one the sense...

To treat of intellectual egotism first, the danger that besets such people as I have described is a want of sympathy with other points of view, and the first thing that such nat...

The reason why intellectual cynicism sets in, is because the boys, as they go on, feel that they have mastered nothing. They have been set to compose in Greek and Latin and Fren...

I have been sometimes consulted by young aspirants in literature as to the best mode of embarking upon the profession of letters; and if my inquirer has confessed that he will b...

Of course there will come moods of discouragement to all authors, when they will ask themselves, as even Tennyson confesses that he was tempted to do, what, after all, it amount...

The essence of the priest is that he should believe himself, however humbly and secretly, to be set in a certain sense between humanity and God. He is conscious, if not of a mis...

The next step in my own progress when confronted, as I say, with the prospect of the possibility that I might feel bound to accept an important position, was the consciousness o...

I would try to trace what I believe the essence of the simple life to be; it lies very far down in the spirit, among the roots of life. The first requisite is a perfect sincerit...

Another remarkable fact about the conventionality that attends games is that certain games are dismissed as childish and contemptible while others are crowned with glory and wor...

This is not at all the same thing as knowing one's own limitations; every one, whether he be artist or writer, critic or practitioner, ought to take the measure of his forces, a...

and that the only sacrifices required of man would be, on the one hand, the sacrifice of selfish desires, evil tendencies, sinful appetites; and, on the other hand, the voluntar...