text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"For a shrewd intellect, the best employ
Is to detect a soul of base alloy;
No task is harder nor imports so much;
Silver or gold, you prove it by the touch;
You separate the pure, discard the dross,
And disregard the labour and the loss:
But a friend's heart, base and adulterate,--
A friendly surface with a core of hate!
Of all the frauds with which the Fates have curst
Our simple easy nature--is the worst:
Beyond the rest ruinous in effect;
And of all others hardest to detect:
For men's and women's hearts you cannot try
Beforehand, like the cattle that you buy.
Nor human wit nor reason, when you treat
For such a purpose, can escape deceit:
Fancy betrays us, and assists the ch",2009-09-14 19:33:38 UTC,"""For a shrewd intellect, the best employ / Is to detect a soul of base alloy;""",2005-04-14 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,Metal,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""alloy"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8557,3293
"I search among my friends--none can I find,
No sterling unadulterated mind;
None that abides the crucible like mine
Rising above the standard--superfine!
",2009-09-14 19:33:40 UTC,"None ""can I find / No sterling unadulterated mind; / None that abides the crucible like mine""",2005-06-03 00:00:00 UTC,LXXX,"",,Metal,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""silver"" in HDIS (Poetry)",8615,3342
"She speaks not, but her languid eye
Seems wrapt in thoughtful ecstacy,
While in her heart love still supreme
Reigns like a visionary dream.
Its shadowy colors deep impress'd
Tinge each wild fancy of her breast;
She thinks her faith was pledged in heaven,
She deems her hand in marriage given;
But pledged to whom, or how, or where,
Weak reason may not well declare.
The images of past delight
Have fleeted from her troubled sight,
And left no perfect form behind
On the dim mirror of the mind:
But anguish for her absent lord
Breathes in each desultory word.
She thinks the spirits of the wold
Him in fell durance fiercely hold,
His beauteous limbs by torture strain'd
On cold obdurate granite chain'd,
Or scorch'd by subterraneous fire
That gleams through caverns dark and dire.
Her fancy hears his spirit wail,
His moan upon the dying gale;
But still she deems some friendly power
Will loose his chains in happier hour,
And lead the warrior's manly charms
To his lone bride's expecting arms:
On future bliss her hopes rely,
And a smile lights the mourner's eye.
The maid her father's court had left
To linger here of joy bereft,
Lonely and strange, and feed her mind
With phantasies of saddest kind.
The king, in pity for her grief
To give her secret wo relief,
Had warn'd that no intrusive eye
Should steal upon her privacy.
Here oft the lovely mourner staid
Till the deep close of evening shade;
Here oft in solitary bower
Wasted the tedious nightly hour.
And now her parting lips unclose,
Warbling the tale of fancied woes;
While the dark frowning rocks around
Pour the wild echo's plaintive sound.
The sweet and melancholy strain
Steals slowly over hill and plain;
It mourns upon the passing gale,
It winds along the narrow vale,
And now it strikes the listening ear
Of Asbiorn rashly stealing near.",2009-09-14 19:47:43 UTC,"""The images of past delight / Have fleeted from her troubled sight, / And left no perfect form behind / On the dim mirror of the mind""",2005-10-10 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""mind"" and ""mirror"" in HDIS (Poetry)",16694,6305
"Surprise is so essential an ingredient of wit, that no wit will bear repetition; -- at least the original electrical feeling produced by any piece of wit can never be renewed. There is a sober sort of approbation succeeds at hearing it the second time, which is as different from its original rapid, pungent volatility, as a bottle of champagne that has been open three days is, from one that has at that very instant emerged from the darkness of the cellar. To hear that the top of Mont Blanc is like an umbrella, though the relation be new to me, is not sufficient to excite surprise; the idea is so very obvious, it is so much within the reach of the most ordinary understandings, that I can derive no sort of pleasure from the comparison. The relation discovered, must be something remote from all the common tracks and sheep-walks made in the mind; it must not be a comparison of color with color, and figure with figure, or any comparison which, though individually new, is specifically stale, and to which the mind has been in the habit of making many [End Page 119] similar; but it must be, something removed from common apprehension, distant from the ordinary haunts of thought, -- things which are never brought together in the common events of life, and in which the mind has discovered relations by its own subtilty and quickness.
(pp. 119-20)",2009-09-14 19:49:53 UTC,"""The relation discovered, must be something remote from all the common tracks and sheep-walks made in the mind.""",2009-05-14 00:00:00 UTC,"Lecture X. On Wit and Humor
",Wit,,"","I've included twice: Tracks and Sheep-Walks. INTEREST. Smith cites Barrow above. His ""sheep-walks"" are a witty rewriting of Barrow's common roads. USE in Beasts",Searching in Google Books,17355,6526
"Most persons who observe their own thoughts must have been conscious of the exactly opposite state. There are cases where our intellect has gone through the arguments, and we give a clear assent to the conclusions. But our minds seem dry and unsatisfied. In that case we have the intellectual part of Belief, but want the emotional part.",2018-01-23 16:14:26 UTC,"""There are cases where our intellect has gone through the arguments, and we give a clear assent to the conclusions. But our minds seem dry and unsatisfied.""",2018-01-23 16:14:26 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,25122,8252
"Probably, when the subject is thoroughly examined, ""conviction"" will be proved to be one of the intensest of human emotions, and one most closely connected with the bodily state. In cases like the Caliph Omar's, it governs all other desires, absorbs the whole nature, and rules the whole life. And in such cases it is accompanied or preceded by the sensation that Scott makes his seer describe as the prelude to a prophecy:—
""At length the fatal answer came,
In characters of living flame—
Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul"".
[See Scott's ""Lady of the Lake,"" canto iv.]
A hot flash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense states of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse the creed of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces and ages. Nor is this intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in these points in which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt it in his anti-Catholicism; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism; and both, I suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel it.",2018-01-23 16:15:42 UTC,"""In cases like the Caliph Omar's, it governs all other desires, absorbs the whole nature, and rules the whole life.""",2018-01-23 16:15:42 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,25123,8252
"Probably, when the subject is thoroughly examined, ""conviction"" will be proved to be one of the intensest of human emotions, and one most closely connected with the bodily state. In cases like the Caliph Omar's, it governs all other desires, absorbs the whole nature, and rules the whole life. And in such cases it is accompanied or preceded by the sensation that Scott makes his seer describe as the prelude to a prophecy:—
""At length the fatal answer came,
In characters of living flame—
Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul"".
[See Scott's ""Lady of the Lake,"" canto iv.]
A hot flash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense states of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse the creed of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces and ages. Nor is this intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in these points in which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt it in his anti-Catholicism; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism; and both, I suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel it.",2018-01-23 16:18:12 UTC,"""A hot flash seems to burn across the brain.""",2018-01-23 16:17:15 UTC,"","",,"","","Reading David Bromwich, ""Return to Reason,"" Harper's Magazine (February, 2018), 31.",25124,8252
"Once acutely felt, I believe it is indelible; at least, it does something to the mind which it is hard for anything else to undo. It has been often said that a man who has once really loved a woman, never can be without feeling towards that woman again. He may go on loving her, or he may change and hate her. In the same way, I think, experience proves that no one who has had real passionate conviction of a creed, the sort of emotion that burns hot upon the brain, can ever be indifferent to that creed again. He may continue to believe it, and to love it; or he may change to the opposite, vehemently argue against it, and persecute it. But he cannot forget it. Years afterwards, perhaps, when life changes, when external interests cease to excite, when the apathy to surroundings which belongs to the old, begins all at once, to the wonder of later friends, who cannot imagine what is come to him, the grey-headed man returns to the creed of his youth.",2018-01-23 16:18:55 UTC,"""Once acutely felt, I believe it is indelible; at least, it does something to the mind which it is hard for anything else to undo.""",2018-01-23 16:18:55 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,25125,8252
"Once acutely felt, I believe it is indelible; at least, it does something to the mind which it is hard for anything else to undo. It has been often said that a man who has once really loved a woman, never can be without feeling towards that woman again. He may go on loving her, or he may change and hate her. In the same way, I think, experience proves that no one who has had real passionate conviction of a creed, the sort of emotion that burns hot upon the brain, can ever be indifferent to that creed again. He may continue to believe it, and to love it; or he may change to the opposite, vehemently argue against it, and persecute it. But he cannot forget it. Years afterwards, perhaps, when life changes, when external interests cease to excite, when the apathy to surroundings which belongs to the old, begins all at once, to the wonder of later friends, who cannot imagine what is come to him, the grey-headed man returns to the creed of his youth.",2018-01-23 16:19:35 UTC,"""In the same way, I think, experience proves that no one who has had real passionate conviction of a creed, the sort of emotion that burns hot upon the brain, can ever be indifferent to that creed again.""",2018-01-23 16:19:35 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,25126,8252
"The explanation of these facts in metaphysical books is very imperfect. Indeed, I only know one school which professes to explain the emotional, as distinguished from the intellectual element in belief. Mr. Bain (after Mr. Mill) speaks very instructively of the ""animal nature of belief,"" but when he comes to trace its cause, his analysis seems, to me at least, utterly unsatisfactory. He says that, ""the state of belief is identical with the activity or active disposition of the system at the moment with reference to the thing believed"". But in many cases there is firm belief where there is no possibility of action or tendency to it. A girl in a country parsonage will be sure ""that Paris never can be taken,"" or that ""Bismarck is a wretch,"" without being able to act on these ideas or wanting to act on them. Many beliefs, in Coleridge's happy phrase, slumber in the ""dormitory of the soul""; they are present to the consciousness, but they incite to no action. And perhaps Coleridge is an example of misformed mind in which not only may ""Faith"" not produce ""works,"" but in which it had a tendency to prevent works. Strong convictions gave him a kind of cramp in the will, and he could not act on them. And in very many persons much-indulged conviction exhausts the mind with the attached ideas; teases it, and so, when the time of action comes, makes it apt to turn to different, perhaps opposite ideas, and to act on them in preference.",2018-01-23 16:21:11 UTC,"""Many beliefs, in Coleridge's happy phrase, slumber in the 'dormitory of the soul'; they are present to the consciousness, but they incite to no action.""",2018-01-23 16:21:11 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,25127,8252