work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
7182,"","Reading Jonathan Lamb, Sterne's Fiction and the Double Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 21.
",2012-01-30 17:00:40 UTC,"Thus much for this comparison of Job's, which though it is very poetical, yet conveys a just idea of the thing referred to. --""That he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not""--is no less a faithful and fine representation of the shortness and vanity of human life, of which one cannot give a better explanation, than by referring to the original, from whence the picture was taken.-- With how quick a succession, do days, months and years pass over our heads? -- how truly like a shadow that departeth do they flee away insensibly, and scarce leave an impression with us? -- when we endeavour to call them back by reflection, and consider in what manner they have gone, how unable are the best of us to give a tolerable account? -- and were it not for some of the more remarkable stages which have distinguished a few periods of this rapid progress we should look back upon it all as Nebuchadnezzar did upon his dream when he awoke in the morning; he was sensible many things had passed, and troubled Job's comparison, like a blooming flower smit and shrivelled up with a malignant blast. In this stage of life chances multiply upon us, -- the seeds of disorders are sown by intemperance or neglect, -- infectious distempers are more easily contracted, when contracted they rage with greater violence, and the success in many cases is more doubtful, insomuch that they who have exercised themselves in computations of this kind tell us, ""That one half of the whole species which are born into the world, go out of it again, and are all dead in so short a space as the first seventeen years.""
(II, 73-5)",,19549,CROSS-REFERENCE: Locke Essay II.x.4.,"""With how quick a succession, do days, months and years pass over our heads? -- how truly like a shadow that departeth do they flee away insensibly, and scarce leave an impression with us?""",Impressions,2012-01-30 17:02:04 UTC,""
5744,"",Reading,2013-04-22 04:06:50 UTC,"This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of those who compose the collective sovereignty than upon those of single princes. Without instruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses instruments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is therefore by no means compleat; nor are they safe in extreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible that, whether covered or not by positive law, in some way or other they are accountable even here for the abuse of their trust. If they are not cut off by a rebellion of their people, they may be strangled by the very Janissaries kept for their security against all other rebellion. Thus we have seen the king of France sold by his soldiers for an encrease of pay. But where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimamation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts, is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought: for as all punishments are for example towards the conservation of the people at large, the people at large can never become the subject of punishment by any human hand. It is therefore of infinite importance that they should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any more than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. They ought to be persuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far less qualified, with safety to themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore they are not, under a false shew of liberty, but, in truth, to exercise an unnatural inverted domination, tyrannically to exact, from those who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to their interest, which is their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will; extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character, whilst by the very same process they give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants or courtly flatterers.
(pp. 138-140, pp. 81-3 in Pocock ed.)",,20119,"","""This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of those who compose the collective sovereignty than upon those of single princes.""",Impressions,2013-04-22 04:06:50 UTC,""
7776,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-11-15 21:15:38 UTC,"The present Scene presents us with a second object of compassion, which though it interests us after a different manner from the former, as neither being so innocent, nor suffering so unjustly; yet, shall I hazard the expression? affects us almost as much. We do not, indeed, feel our minds impressed with such a tender sensibility towards the latter, as the first; but, for the honour and dignity of human nature, let me say, that our commiseration, in the second case, arises from principles of a nobler kind; from our forgiveness of the penitent, and our compassion for his misfortunes, softened still more by our sorrow for his guilt: so that, upon the whole, the generosity of our sentiment, in one instance, nearly equals the sympathy of it, in the other.
(p. 340)",,23212,"","""We do not, indeed, feel our minds impressed with such a tender sensibility towards the latter, as the first.""",Impressions,2013-11-15 21:15:38 UTC,""
7776,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-11-15 21:19:59 UTC,"The remainder of this speech is worth quoting, both on account of the fine poetical imagery it contains, and in order to shew the strong terror which guilt had impressed on his mind, by his invoking even inanimate matter not to inform against him.
Now o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarum'd by his centinel, the wolf †,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
Like Tarquin's theft ‡, gliding tow'rd his design ‖,
Moves like a ghost--Thou sound and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time ¶,
Which now suits with it.
(p. 412)",,23215,"","""The remainder of this speech is worth quoting, both on account of the fine poetical imagery it contains, and in order to shew the strong terror which guilt had impressed on his mind, by his invoking even inanimate matter not to inform against him.""",Impressions,2013-11-15 21:19:59 UTC,""
7776,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-11-15 21:20:49 UTC,"Macbeth.
Methought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep--The innocent sleep--
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve * of care,
The birth † of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
In the first part of my remark on the second Scene above, I have observed upon the impressions that a disturbed mind is apt to stamp on our dreams and sight. This passage adds our sense of hearing, also, to the testimony of our conscience.
Toward the latter end of this Scene, there is another hint given to the same admonitory purpose.
(pp. 413-4)",,23216,"","""In the first part of my remark on the second Scene above, I have observed upon the impressions that a disturbed mind is apt to stamp on our dreams and sight.""","",2013-11-15 21:20:49 UTC,""
7776,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-11-15 22:03:05 UTC,"In this scenic province of instruction, our representations are much better calculated to answer the end proposed, than those of the Antients were, on account of the different hours of exhibition. Theirs were performed in the morning; which circumstance suffered the salutary effect to be worn out of the mind, by the business or avocations of the day. Ours are at night; the impressions accompany us to our couch, supply matter for our latest reflections, and may sometimes furnish the subject of our very dreams.
(p. 527)",,23220,"","""In this scenic province of instruction, our representations are much better calculated to answer the end proposed, than those of the Antients were, on account of the different hours of exhibition. Theirs were performed in the morning; which circumstance suffered the salutary effect to be worn out of the mind, by the business or avocations of the day. Ours are at night; the impressions accompany us to our couch, supply matter for our latest reflections, and may sometimes furnish the subject of our very dreams.""",Impressions,2013-11-15 22:03:05 UTC,""
7982,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2014-07-25 02:35:27 UTC,"""A nobleman, cries a member, who had hitherto been silent, is created as much for the confusion of us authors as the catch-pole. I'll tell you a story, gentlemen, which is as true as that this pipe is made of clay. When I was delivered of my first book, I owed my taylor for a suit of cloaths, but that is nothing new, you know, and may be any man's case as well as mine. Well, owing him for a suit of cloaths, and hearing that my book took very well, he sent for his money, and insisted upon being paid immediately: though I was at that time rich in fame, for my book run like wild-fire, yet I was very short in money, and being unable to satisfy his demand, prudently resolved to keep my chamber, preferring a prison of my own chusing at home, to one of my taylor's chusing abroad. In vain the bailiffs used all their arts to decoy me from my citadel, in vain they sent to let me know that a gentleman wanted to speak with me at the next tavern, in vain they came with an urgent message from my aunt in the country; in vain I was told that a particular friend was at the point death, and desired to take his last farewell; I was deaf, insensible, rock, adamant, the bailiffs could make no impression on my hard heart, for I effectually kept my liberty by never stirring out of the room.
(I, pp. 124-125)",,24262,"","""I was deaf, insensible, rock, adamant, the bailiffs could make no impression on my hard heart, for I effectually kept my liberty by never stirring out of the room.""",Impressions,2014-07-25 02:35:27 UTC,LETTER XXIX. From the same.
7982,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2014-07-25 02:48:44 UTC,"Gratified ambition, or irreparable calamity may produce transient sensations of pleasure or distress. Those storms may discompose in proportion as they are strong, or the mind is pliant to their impression. But the soul, though at first lifted up by the event, is every day operated upon with diminish'd influence; and at length subsides into the level of its usual tranquility. Should some unexpected turn of fortune take thee from fetters, and place thee on a throne, exultation would be natural upon the change; but the temper, like the face, would soon resume its native serenity.
(I, pp. 185-186)",,24273,"","""Those storms may discompose in proportion as they are strong, or the mind is pliant to their impression.""",Impressions,2014-07-25 02:48:44 UTC,"LETTER XLIII. From Lien Chi Altangi to Hingpo, a slave in Persia"