A Club of One: Passages from the Note-book of a Man who Might Have Been SociableHoughton, Mifflin, 1887 - 254 pages |
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Popular passages
Page 26 - I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young...
Page 105 - But when a man's fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within.
Page 106 - For if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Page 188 - The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility — to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing — unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being.
Page 186 - There is a destiny made for a man by his ancestors, and no one can elude, were he able to attempt it, the tyranny of his organization.
Page 31 - THROUGH ME is the way into the doleful city; through me the way into the eternal pain; through me the way among the people lost. Justice moved my High Maker; Divine Power made me, Wisdom Supreme, and Primal Love.1 Before me were no things created, but eternal;^ and eternal I endure: leave all hope, ye that enter.
Page 105 - ... and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions, because that instructs him in his private...
Page 117 - No recent census had been taken when I was at Tiberias, but I know that the congregation of fleas which attended at my church alone must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; the pert, jumping puce...
Page 92 - THEY that cry down moral Honesty, cry down that which is a great part of Religion, my Duty towards God, and my duty towards Man. What care I to see a Man run after a Sermon, if he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes home...
Page 12 - Nimrod night and day, so that he built himself a room of glass in yonder palace, that he might dwell therein, and shut out the insect. But the gnat entered also, and passed by his ear into his brain, upon which it fed, and increased in size day by day, so that the servants of Nimrod beat his head with a hammer continually, that he might have some ease from his pain ; but he died after suffering these torments for four hundred years.