Lectures on the Harvard ClassicsSixty introductory lectures, five each on history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science, drama, voyages and travel, and religion. |
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Page 13
... human emotion , was fading into stuff for the fantasies of dreamers . The white - robed priest and smoking altar , the riotous procession and mystic ritual would no longer chain the affections of mankind . No longer would the shepherd ...
... human emotion , was fading into stuff for the fantasies of dreamers . The white - robed priest and smoking altar , the riotous procession and mystic ritual would no longer chain the affections of mankind . No longer would the shepherd ...
Page 23
... human actions and motives , an imagination ready to seize on the ever - living drama of fact , and a heart ready to respond to those countless acts of heroism that have ennobled great men and great races , and with them all humanity ...
... human actions and motives , an imagination ready to seize on the ever - living drama of fact , and a heart ready to respond to those countless acts of heroism that have ennobled great men and great races , and with them all humanity ...
Page 24
... human development . The Greeks , like the Christians , went to school for many centaries to their predecessors . Their earliest poems , the " Iliad " and " Odyssey " of Homer , are in one sense a legacy from the Cretan - Mycenæan age ...
... human development . The Greeks , like the Christians , went to school for many centaries to their predecessors . Their earliest poems , the " Iliad " and " Odyssey " of Homer , are in one sense a legacy from the Cretan - Mycenæan age ...
Page 38
... human emotion rising to the most intense collective utter- ance at the pangs of starvation , of murder , of ... humanity , fails to catch the figure of that unfortunate woman who tramped through the empty streets of Paris at dawn one ...
... human emotion rising to the most intense collective utter- ance at the pangs of starvation , of murder , of ... humanity , fails to catch the figure of that unfortunate woman who tramped through the empty streets of Paris at dawn one ...
Page 51
... human heart has ever dreamed of a fairer world than the one it knows . No man , however dark his spirit , however cramped his senses , is quite without the yearning after wider horizons and a purer air . In a happy moment earth seems to ...
... human heart has ever dreamed of a fairer world than the one it knows . No man , however dark his spirit , however cramped his senses , is quite without the yearning after wider horizons and a purer air . In a happy moment earth seems to ...
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ancient Aristotle artistic Autobiography beauty biography Cervantes character Christian Confucian Confucius critical Descartes desire doctrine Don Quixote drama economic eighteenth century Emerson emotion England English essay Europe fact Faust feel fiction France Galileo Greek Harvard Classics human ideal ideas Iliad imagination important individual influence intellectual interest Italian Julius Cæsar knowledge labor less literary literature living lyric Machiavelli matter means mediæval ment method Middle Ages mind modern moral narrative nature never novel novelist period philosophy play Plutarch poem poet poetic poetry political popular practical problems PROFESSOR prose purpose question reader religion religious Renaissance romance scientific social society Socrates Spain spirit story teaching theory things Thomas Malory thought tion to-day tradition tragedy treatise true truth wealth Wealth of Nations words writings xliii
Popular passages
Page 67 - BRIGHT STAR ! would I were steadfast as thou art :— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores...
Page 316 - Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music, — subtle, sweet, mournful?
Page 60 - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.— That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures.
Page 60 - For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity ; Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man...
Page 59 - Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Page 312 - I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
Page 129 - How charming is divine Philosophy ! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Page 163 - Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet— Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision— were it not He?
Page 58 - Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read.' So he vanish'd from my sight; And I pluck'da hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.
Page 15 - A victorious, line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire ; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland: The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian ileet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.