work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4582,"",Searching in ECCO,2006-10-09 00:00:00 UTC,"To express this to us by Similitudes both just and beautiful; some Philosophers compare an human Soul to an empty Cabinet, of inexpressible Value for the Matter and Workmanship: and particularly, for the wonderful Contrivance of it, as having all imaginable Conveniencies within, for treasuring up Jewels and Curiousities of every kind.--But then we ourselves must collect and sort them, and we shall ill deserve such a Present from the Maker, if we either keep it empty, or fill it with Trifles; nay, if we do not, as we have opportunity, furnish and enrich it with whatsoever is of use or worth in Art or nature.----This ought indeed to be the main Business of our Lives.--Others, with equal truth and justice, have likened the Minds of Children to a rasa Tabula, or white Paper, whereon we may imprint, or write what Characters we please; which will prove so lasting, as not to be effaced without injuring or destroying the Beauty of the whole; even as Experience shews, and the Son of Sirach advises, My son gather instruction from thy youth up: so shalt thou find wisdom, till thine old age.--These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and [end page 7] beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleasant to the Soul, as Light and Proportion to the Eye, or as sweet as Honey to the Taste. But if such Impressions be not made, either ignorance and Folly will prevail; or Errors and Prejudices will take possession, and afterwards prevent the Knowledge of Wisdom from entring or striking on the Mind with its innate force and lustre. And when once we have lost our natural Sense and Love of Truth and Right, and when the Light within us is become Darkness, how great must that Darkness be, and how irretrievable the Misery of such a State? Wise there was the caution of our blessed Master, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, Take heed, that the Light which is in thee be not Darkness.
(pp. 7-8)",2012-04-17,12057,"•I've included thrice: Characters, Eye, Taste.
•Cross-reference: compare previous. Do Bernard and Denne crib from the same script?
","""These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleasant to the Soul, as Light and Proportion to the Eye, or as sweet as Honey to the Taste.""",Coinage and Writing,2012-04-17 20:35:10 UTC,""
7582,"","Reading Ted Underwood, Why Literary Periods Mattered (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2013), 77.",2013-08-14 17:57:12 UTC,"[...] Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,--wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.
The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrades the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have, for more than twenty centuries, been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves, her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abodes in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall, in vain, labor to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the rained dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts;--her influence and her glory will still survive,--fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin and over which they exercise their control.
(pp. 101-2)",,22143,"","""Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines.""","",2013-08-14 17:58:22 UTC,""