A Practical System of Rhetoric: Or, The Principles and Rules of Style, Inferred from Examples of Writing

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Shirley & Hyde, 1829 - 252 pages
 

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Page 103 - ... of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God ; her voice, the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her homage : the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.
Page 64 - Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place: The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnished clock that clicked behind the door; The chest contrived a double debt to pay, A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day...
Page 231 - When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in speech, farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every...
Page 231 - The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object, — this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
Page 66 - To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
Page 37 - The sky is changed! - and such a change! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
Page 27 - My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display ; Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword : No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter lingering chills the lap of May : No zephyr fondly...
Page 69 - Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us : and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching ; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.
Page 223 - The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources, we but accumulate those means. Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which...
Page 66 - Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.

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