Pen Pictures of Modern Authors |
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Common terms and phrases
acquaintance admiration afterward amused anecdote appeared asked Bayard Taylor beautiful Broadstairs Browning Bryant called Carlyle Carlyle's Charles Dickens Charlotte Brontė charming conversation delight dinner earnest Emerson English expression eyes face feel felt gave genial genius George Eliot give Goethe hair hand Hawthorne Hawthorne's head hear heard heart Henry Larkin humor impression Jane Eyre Jean Ingelow kind knew lady laugh letter literary living London Longfellow look Lowell manner ment mind Miss morning N. P. Willis nature ness never occasion once Oscar Oscar Wilde Ouida passed picture pleasant poems poet poetic poetry present 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 touched utter voice walked Walt Whitman words writing wrote
Popular passages
Page 75 - I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone. My soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him ; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
Page 96 - 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 95 - 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 6 - 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 71 - 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 295 - 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 93 - 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 260 - Oh ! that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might kiss that cheek...
Page 10 - 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 152 - 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.