My Commonplace Book

Browning, R. 13, 20, 24, 46, 71, 84, 104, 114, 118, 149, 193, 195, 204, 218, 224, 225, 233, 234, 242, 249, 255, 256, 260, 262, 269, 270, 275, 276, 284, 285, 303, 313, 317, 319,...

Various explanations have been given for the Greek failure to appreciate beauty in nature. Ruskin’s theory is most often quoted, that the Greeks were _so familiar_ with beautifu...

(Referring to the Gorham case) The future historian of opinion will write of us in this strain: “The people who spoke the language of Shakespeare were great in the constructive...

_Of wounds and sore defeat_ _I made my battle-stay;_ _Wingèd sandals for my feet_ _I wove of my delay;_ _Of weariness and fear_ _I made my shouting spear;_ _Of loss, and, doubt,...

William James adopted much the same view as Myers (see, for example, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_). But much has been written of late about sub-consciousness and abou...

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, A...

The passion which unites the sexes ... is the most compound, and therefore the most powerful of all the feelings. Added to the purely physical elements of it are, first, those h...

The remarkably fine and suggestive essay in which this passage occurs was written in 1876, in the course of a discussion raised by Tyndall’s Belfast Address. It is not easy to a...

“_Nor something fairer far._” In Sir F. Younghusband’s _Kashmir_ (1911) there is another suggestion, supplementary to this: “There came upon me this thought, which doubtless has...

On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compa...

Myers says: “The question of the survival of man is a branch of experimental psychology. Is there, or is there not, evidence in the actual observed phenomena of automatism, appa...

The hour, which might have been, yet might not be, Which man’s and woman’s heart conceived and bore Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore Bides it the breaking of Time’s we...

God’s works—paint any one, and count it crime To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works Are here already; nature is complete: Suppose you reproduce her (which you can’t) The...

[71] The whole argument seems to have little foundation. Are we to assume, for example, that the “average ability” of the Greeks before and after their great period, or of the E...

From his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood, Made of sliding, folding rosewood; This he perched upon a tripod— Crouched beneath its dusky cover— Stretched his hand, e...

This is the direct answer to George Eliot, allowing her very important assumption _that we have a duty towards others_, including those who come after us. But this assumption is...

They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them mere...

“If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away,” says Antoninus: do the same with a thought.... There is no cucumber so heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall.

This is quoted in Plutarch’s _Lives_. Isocrates was asked why he taught rhetoric so much and yet spoke so rarely; and this was his reply. Horace (_Ars Poetica_ 304) playfully sa...

We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions abroad, when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies at home. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth want...

Humanity is neither a love for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and les...

A world without a contingency or an agony could have no hero and no saint, and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a Son of God. But for the suspended plot, that is fol...

(Mr. T. R. Glover in _The Jesus of History_ points out that when Christ said “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations” (Luke xxii, 26), He meant that the disci...

As regards the latter poem, the curious fact is that it is read as an exquisite piece of _music_, and not for any poetic thought it contains. If it _has_ any coherent meaning, i...

Form ye a circle of fire Around him, our King and our Sire— While in the centre he stands, Kneel with your swords in your hands, Then with one voice deep and free Echo like wave...

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, rei...

Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bade thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, wo...

I will now give another instance where the classical enthusiast, as in Mr. Livingstone’s case, tends to exaggerate the value of his favourite literature—truly wonderful as it is...

Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to a subject quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and important, namely, the distortion of truth caused by...

She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple pie. Just then, a great she-bear coming down the street poked its nose into the shop-window. “What! no soap?” So he di...

Some curious facts may be noted. The wife is kept in seclusion and the husband does the marketing, buying among other things her _rouge_. Observe how perfunctory are the pretty...

There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals, Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature; But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are...

In Professor Murray’s two lines Zeus becomes “God,” “living waters” is taken from the Song of Solomon, and “God’s quiet garden” from Isaiah and Ezekiel. Such expressions, with t...

Two or three of them got round me, and begged me for the twentieth time to tell them the name of my country. Then, as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, they insisted t...

O my earliest love, who, ere I number’d Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill! Will a swallow—or a swift, or some bird— Fly to her and say, I love her still?