Talks on Writing English: Second seriesHoughton Mifflin Company, 1901 - 259 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
able admirable alliteration Anthony Trollope ARLO BATES artistic beginning clause clear complete composition conjunctions consciously convey David Masson definite dialogue difference Edmund Burke effect entirely erally euphony example expression fact fault feel figure force gerund give given Honoré de Balzac human idea illustration importance impression language least less letter-writing letters liquid consonants literary literature little foxes matter MATTHEW ARNOLD means mind mood naturally ness noun once paragraph parallel construction participle perhaps person phrase picture point of view possible practical prepositions principle produce pronoun proper prose reader realize regard relation revision seems sense sort speech Stevenson story student style substantive sure Talks on Writing tence theme thing thought tion tive topic sentence train truth verb verbal verbal noun verse Victor Hugo Walter Pater whole wish words writer Writing English written
Popular passages
Page 235 - I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat.
Page 81 - In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole : and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth...
Page 146 - The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images.
Page 208 - Trollope, with his want of discretion in this particular. In a digression, a parenthesis or an aside, he concedes to the reader that he and this trusting friend are only "making believe.
Page 57 - And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night...
Page 44 - It all amounts to this — the sovereign proof That we devote ourselves to God, is seen' In living just as though no God there were...
Page 73 - Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, Like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.
Page 128 - SQUIRE Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17-, and go back to the time when my father kept the 'Admiral Benbow* inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.
Page 161 - Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range ; Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Page 73 - The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for, and to be buried in.