work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
7486,"",Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 13:32:43 UTC,"Genius implies likewise activity of imagination. Whenever a fine imagination possesses healthful vigour, it will be continually starting hints, and pouring in conceptions upon the mind. As soon as any of them appears, fancy, with the utmost alertness, places them in every light, and enables us to pursue them through all their consequences, that we may be able to determine, whether they will promote the design which we have in eye. This activity of imagination, by which it darts with the quickness of lightning, through all possible views of the ideas which are presented, arises from the same perfection of the associating principles, which produces the other qualities of genius. These principles are so vigorous, that they will not allow the mind to be unemployed for a moment, and at the same time constantly suggest the design of the work, as the point to which all this employment tends. A false agility of imagination produces mere useless musing, or endless reveries, and hurries a man over large fields, without any settled aim: but true genius pursues a fixt direction, and employs its activity in continually starting such conceptions as not only arise from the present idea, but also terminate in the general subject: and though a thousand arrangements of the conceptions which it starts, should fail of answering the intention, it is indefatigable in trying new arrangements, till it can happily accomplish one that answers it. Whenever an image or a sentiment occurs to the poet or the orator, imagination sets it in every possible light, enables him to conceive its genuine effect, and thus puts it in his power to judge, whether it ought to be rejected or retained. A philosopher no sooner thinks of an experiment or an argument, than imagination, by representing it in every attitude, enables him to determine, what will be its force, and whether it will be to his purpose. In this manner the restless activity of imagination quickly constructs a sort of model by which we may form some idea of the work, before we proceed to execute it.
(I.iii, pp. 57-9)",,21174,"","""Genius implies likewise activity of imagination. Whenever a fine imagination possesses healthful vigour, it will be continually starting hints, and pouring in conceptions upon the mind.","",2013-06-27 13:32:43 UTC,""
5583,"",Searching ECCO-TCP,2013-11-18 19:23:24 UTC,"I WILL not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same; or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply, are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, and I shall hereafter have occasion to illustrate it more fully, that without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and publick spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling.
(Vol. I, Lecture I, pp. 15-16)",,23258,"","""Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart.""","",2013-11-18 19:23:24 UTC,""
7934,"",Reading,2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,"In all private misfortunes, in pain, in sickness, in sorrow, the weakest man, when his friend, and still more when a stranger visits him, is immediately impressed with the view in which they are likely to look upon his situation. Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance. His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderating the former, but by importunately calling upon the latter.
(text from from econlib.org, III.i.65; cf. pp. 145-6 in Liberty Fund ed.) ",,24007,"","""Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance.""","",2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,""
5767,"",Reading in ECCO-TCP,2018-04-26 23:11:25 UTC,"I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost. Though a small particular may appear trifling to some, it will be relished by others; while every little spark adds something to the general blaze: and to please the true, candid, warm admirers of Johnson, and in any degree increase the splendour of his reputation, I bid defiance to the shafts of ridicule, or even of malignity. Showers of them have been discharged at my ""Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides;"" yet it still sails unhurt along the stream of time, and, as an attendant upon Johnson, ""Pursues the triumph, and partakes the gale.""
(II, 167)",,25190,"","""I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost.""","",2018-04-26 23:11:25 UTC,""