Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/488



"When a writer reasons, we look only for perspicuity; when he describes, we expect embellishment; when he divides, or relates, we desire plainness and simplicity."--Blair's Rhet., p. 144.

"Livy and Herodotus are diffuse; Thucydides and Sallust are succinct; yet all of them are agreeable."--Ib., p. 178.

"Whenever petulant ignorance, pride, malice, malignity, or envy, interposes to cloud or sully his fame, I will take upon me to pronounce that the eclipse will not last long."--Dr. Delany.

"She said she had nothing to say, for she was resigned, and I knew all she knew that concerned us in this world; but she desired to be alone, that in the presence of God only, she might without interruption do her last duty to me."--Spect., No. 520.

"Wisdom and truth, the offspring of the sky, are immortal; while cunning and deception, the meteors of the earth, after glittering for a moment, must pass away."--Robert Hall. "See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant."--Jeremiah, i, 10.

"God might command the stones to be made bread, or the clouds to rain it; but he chooses rather to leave mankind to till, to sow, to reap, to gather into barns, to grind, to knead, to bake, and then to eat."--''London Quarterly Review''.

"Eloquence is no invention of the schools. Nature teaches every man to be eloquent, when he is much in earnest. Place him in some critical situation, let him have some great interest at stake, and you will see him lay hold of the most effectual means of persuasion."--Blair's Rhet., p. 235.

"It is difficult to possess great fame and great ease at the same time. Fame, like fire, is with difficulty kindled, is easily increased, but dies away if not continually fed. To preserve fame alive, every enterprise ought to be a pledge of others, so as to keep mankind in constant expectation."--Art of Thinking, p. 50. "Pope, finding little advantage from external help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of study which he completed with little other incitement than the desire of excellence."--Johnson's Lives of Poets, p. 498.

"Loose, then, from earth the grasp of fond desire,   Weigh anchor, and some happier clime explore."--Young.

LESSON VI.--PARTICIPLES.

"The child, affrighted with the view of his father's helmet and crest, and clinging to the nurse; Hector, putting off his helmet, taking the child into his arms, and offering up a prayer for him; Andromache, receiving back the child with a smile of pleasure, and at the same instant bursting into tears; form the most natural and affecting picture that can possibly be imagined."--Blair's Rhet., p. 435.

"The truth of being, and the truth of knowing are one; differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected."--''Ld. Bacon''. "Verbs denote states of being, considered as beginning, continuing, ending, being renewed, destroyed, and again repeated, so as to suit any occasion."--William Ward's Gram., p. 41.

"We take it for granted, that we have a competent knowledge and skill, and that we are able to acquit ourselves properly, in our own native tongue; a faculty, solely acquired by use, conducted by habit, and tried by the ear, carries us on without reflection."--Lowth's Gram., p. vi.

"I mean the teacher himself; who, stunned with the hum, and suffocated with the closeness of his school-room, has spent the whole day in controlling petulance, exciting indifference to action, striving to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to soften obstinacy."--Sir W. Scott.

"The inquisitive mind, beginning with criticism, the most agreeable of all amusements, and finding no obstruction in its progress, advances far into the sensitive part of our nature; and gains imperceptibly a thorough knowledge of the human heart, of its desires, and of every motive to action."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', i, 42.

"They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem;   Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem."--Goldsmith.