A System of Rhetoric

Front Cover
A. S. Barnes & Company, 1884 - 673 pages
 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 81 - Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me ! You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass : and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Page 272 - Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand, and my heart, to this vote.
Page 138 - We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground : judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue.
Page 596 - The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things.
Page 517 - Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.
Page cxxxiv - In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold : Or as a thief bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors...
Page xxxix - And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others : 10 Two men went up into the temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
Page 87 - I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town — the tide rose to an incredible height — the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the...
Page 475 - The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Page 485 - Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? "They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine.

Bibliographic information