Pen Pictures of Modern AuthorsWilliam Shepard Walsh |
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Common terms and phrases
admiration afterward amused appearance asked Bayard Taylor beautiful Browning Bryant called Carlyle Carlyle's Charles Dickens charming conversation delight dinner doubt earnest Emerson English expression eyes face feel felt Fitz James O'Brien friends G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS gave genial genius George Eliot give Goethe hair hand Hawthorne Hawthorne's head hear heard heart Henry Clapp Henry Larkin impression interesting Jean Ingelow knew lady laugh letters literary living London Longfellow look Lowell manner memory ment mind Miss morning never occasion once Oscar Ouida passed Pfaff's picture pleasant poems poet poetic poetry remarkable remember reminiscences replied Robert Browning Ruskin seemed seen sketch smile speak spirit spoke story Street talk tell Tennyson Thackeray thing Thomas Carlyle thought tion told tone took touched truth utter voice walked Walt Whitman woman words writing wrote young
Popular passages
Page 92 - For myself, there had been epochs of my life when I, too, might have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe ; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher.
Page 91 - People that had lighted on a new thought or a thought that they fancied new came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary, to ascertain its quality and value.
Page 4 - C. had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy?- and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for that night he was in his more acrid mood, and though much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected...
Page 67 - For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free; which is the mother of us all.
Page 281 - No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a gentleman ; his bearing is cold and uninviting: his style of conversation either openly cynical or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his bonhomie is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched...
Page 89 - Were I to adopt a pet idea, as so many people do, and fondle it in my embraces to the exclusion of all others, it would be, that the great want which mankind labors under at this present period is sleep. The world should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap.
Page 246 - Oh ! that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might kiss that cheek...
Page 8 - He sings, rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning, some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which, as with a knitting needle, he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced, now and then, to let fall a row.
Page 148 - Hawthorne's love for the sea amounted to a passionate worship, and while I (the worst sailor probably on this planet) was longing, spite of the good company on board, to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his quiet, earnest way, ' I should like to sail on and on forever, and never touch the shore again.
Page 218 - It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world ; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable profusion.