The Idler

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J. Buckland, J. Rivington and Sons, T. Payne and Sons, L. Davis, B. White and Son ... [and 36 others in London], 1787
 

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Side 306 - Here will I hold. If there's a power above us — And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works — He must delight in virtue; And that which He delights in must be happy.
Side 119 - An ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country ; a news-writer is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit.
Side 84 - The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an.
Side 328 - ... he always annexes to the dove ; but, if he pretends to defend the preference he gives to one or the other by endeavouring to prove that this more beautiful form proceeds from a particular gradation of magnitude, undulation of a curve, or direction of a line, or whatever other conceit of his imagination he shall fix on as a criterion of form, he will be continually contradicting himself, and find at last that the great Mother of Nature will not be subjected to such narrow rules.
Side 398 - I will, however, not deviate too far from the beaten track of life, but will try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry a wife beautiful as the Houries...
Side 65 - ... is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive ; to try how long life may be continued in various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision or laceration of -the vital parts ; to examine whether burning irons are felt more acutely by the bone or tendon ; and whether the more lasting agonies are produced by poison forced into the mouth, or injected into the veins.
Side 234 - CRITICISM is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may by mere labour be obtained is too great to be willingly endured ; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others ; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a Critic.
Side 134 - ... that it has always many objects within its view, will seldom be long without some near and familiar image through which an easy transition may be made to truths more distant and obscure.
Side 342 - But such is the present state of our literature, that the ancient sage, who thought a great book a great evil, would now think the multitude of books a multitude of evils. He would consider a bulky writer who engrossed a year, and a swarm of pamphleteers who stole each an hour, as equal wasters of human life, and would make no other difference between them, than between a beast of prey and a flight of locusts.
Side 398 - Seventy years are allowed to man ; I have yet fifty remaining ; ten years I will allot to the attainment of knowledge, and ten I will pass in foreign countries...

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