The Vanity and Insanity of Genius, Issues 3621-3632 |
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admiration Ampère asylum beautiful believed Blake borg Burke Byron character Charles Lamb Cicero Comte conceit critic Dante death Dickens disease dream eccentric egotism egotist Erskine eyes fame fancy feeling flattery French friends genius George Eliot George Sand glory Goethe greatest hallucinations heaven honor immortal insanity John Clare Lamartine Landor letters literary live Lord lunatic Madame Madame de Staël madman Margaret Fuller melancholy mental Milton mind monomania Napoleon Nathaniel Lee nature ness never night once Patrick Brontë person philosopher Pindar poem poet poetry poor praise replied Rousseau says scious seems Shakespeare Shelley Sir Fret Sneer soul Southey spirit Staël story strange Sweden Swedenborg Taine talk Tasso tell Thackeray thee thing thou thought tion told truth uncon vanity verses Victor Hugo Virgil Voltaire Whitman William Blake women words Wordsworth write wrote
Popular passages
Page 19 - Though I, once gone, to all the world must die : The earth can yield me but a common grave, "When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read ; And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead ; You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen,) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
Page 136 - Midst others of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell.
Page 92 - Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from, The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
Page 24 - ... they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them ; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. And they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
Page 50 - Ere years have made thee old, Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat, As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.
Page 163 - The storm has gone over me ; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth ! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it.
Page 92 - For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me, I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule, And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me, And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me; Dear camerado!
Page 79 - ... which he exercised over his contemporaries, at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. We never could very clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing ; or how it is that men who affect in their compositions qualities and feelings which they have not, impose so much more easily on their contemporaries than on posterity.
Page 51 - Minds that are great and free Should not on fortune pause; 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause. What though the greedy fry Be taken with false baits Of worded balladry, And think it poesy ? They die with their conceits, And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits. Then take in hand thy lyre; Strike in thy proper strain...
Page 24 - Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; — only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them ; they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them ; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them.