The Drift of Romanticism: Shelburne Essays. eighth seriesHoughton Mifflin, Riverside Press, 1913 - 302 pages |
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absolute activity æstheticism agnosticism attempt authority beauty Beckford called cause century character Christianity consciousness creed desire difference dreams dualism egotism element emotions ence Epicureanism essay evil evolution existence experience expression fact faculties faith feeling Fiona Macleod flux Fonthill force Giaour heart human Huxley hypothesis ical ideal ideas illusion imagination impulses individual infinite inner check insight instinct intellectual Irenæus limitless literature look meaning ment mind moral mystical mythology Nāgasena naturalistic pantheism nature ness never Newman Nietzsche Nietzsche's Oxford pain passed passions Pater pathetic fallacy Peter Beckford phenomena philosophical science philosophy Plato pleasure positive science Protestantism pure rationalism reality reason religion religious revelation romantic romanticism scepticism scientific sense sentiment Sharp sion society soul spirit strange Superman superrational sympathy theory things thought tion to-day true truth Vathek virtue Walter Pater whole William Beckford William Sharp word writing wrote
Popular passages
Page 106 - And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection — to beauty in a word, which is only truth seen from another side? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tubingen.
Page 109 - Not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses?
Page 55 - And so I argue about the world ; — if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence ; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.
Page 97 - She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave...
Page 182 - I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
Page 231 - Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
Page 14 - IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round : And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Page 114 - That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air. There is no danger to a man, that knows What life and death is : there's not any law Exceeds his knowledge ; neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law : He goes before them, and commands them all, That to himself is a law rational.
Page 55 - I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. . . . I argue about the world; -if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity.
Page 109 - ... it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, .things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend.