work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5617,Ruling Passion,"Searching HDIS for ""ruling passion""",2004-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"LADY FLIPPANT SAVAGE
And wou'd you have me accessary to the ruin of a young creature?
CHEATERLY
There is no ruin intended;--I have open'd my mind to the lady,--Sir Buzzard is my friend, and I only solicit your interest; I would marry Constance.
LADY FLIPPANT SAVAGE
No ruin intended! could a greater curse befal a young creature than to marry you! --who are you, Sir?
CHEATERLY
Who am I, madam! a gentleman.
LADY FLIPPANT SAVAGE
I don't mean to asperse your birth, Sir; but is not your ruling passion play; your principal dependance cards and dice; your most intimate connections jockies, grooms, game-cocks, and race-horses? I am surprized you could look up to her.
CHEATERLY
My fortune and family entitle me to look up to any woman.",,15031,•First performed 2 April 1785.,Play [gambling] may be a ruling passion,"",2009-09-14 19:42:35 UTC,Act I
5649,Ruling Passion,"Searching HDIS for ""ruling passion""",2004-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"COUNT PIERPONT
Monsieur Oldstock.
SIR OLIVER OLDSTOCK
Count Pierpoint, no apologies: I am not at all angry with you, nor do I entertain any suspicion of my wife--Love of admiration is her ruling passion; and as long as she lives, she'll fancy herself an object of that admiration.
COUNT PIERPONT
Vous savez très bien my passion pour Mademoiselle Harriet.
SIR OLIVER OLDSTOCK
I know every thing--I now see your view, in all this attention to Lady Oldstock: you imprudently made her your enemy, not knowing her character; but you have very wisely rectified your mistake.--You see, Count, I'm a keen old fellow; I haven't liv'd for nothing so many years in the world.
COUNT PIERPONT
Mon Dieu! vous etes un Machiavel.",,15100,"•Play is ""Dedicated to Mrs. Montague."" First performed 18 November 1786.",Love of admiration may be a ruling passion,"",2009-09-14 19:42:46 UTC,"Act IV, scene iv"
5744,"",Searching in Past Masters,2009-09-14 19:43:17 UTC,"I am convinced that there are men of considerable parts among the popular leaders in the national assembly. Some of them display eloquence in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish. What they have done towards the support of their system bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system itself, taken as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out any thing which displays, in a single instance, the work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even the provisions of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose every where seems to have been to evade and slip aside from difficulty. This it has been the glory of the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome; and when they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science; and even to push forward beyond the reach of their original thoughts, the land marks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a task; it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary monarchy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the plenitude of force. They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties which they rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in their course; they multiply and thicken on them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit, and without direction; and, in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes feeble, vitious, and insecure.
(p. 216)",2005-10-09,15302,•INTEREST. USE in ENTRY.,"""This it has been the glory of the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome; and when they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science; and even to push forward beyond the reach of their original thoughts, the land marks of the human understanding itself""","",2009-09-14 19:43:17 UTC,""
5780,"",Searching in HDIS (Drama),2004-08-07 00:00:00 UTC,"The sons of Europe found a guileless race,
No fraud was veiled beneath the smiling face;
Their manners, mild, benevolent, and kind,
Pourtrayed the cloudless sunshine of the mind:
Bless'd in their Prince's patriarchal reign,
Whose power relieved, but ne'er inflicted pain,
Their placid lives no fancy'd evils knew;
Their joys were many, and their wants were few.
One custom with their virtues ill agreed,
Which made Humanity with anguish bleed;
Compelled at Superstition's shrine to bow,
The hapless victims of a cruel vow!
Their sweetest maids were often doomed to prove,
No joy in friendship, nor no bliss in love!
Yet love and nature cannot be supprest,
The sigh will heave, and palpitate the breast;
For spite of vows, which Heaven's wise laws disown,
Love sits triumphant on the heart--his throne!
And breaks those fetters bigots would impose,
To aggravate the sense of human woes!",2011-06-26,15425,"","""Love sits triumphant on the heart--his throne! / And breaks those fetters bigots would impose, / To aggravate the sense of human woes!""",Fetters,2011-05-27 14:14:23 UTC,Front Matter
5782,Inner and Outer,"Searching ""fancy"" and ""court"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2004-08-22 00:00:00 UTC,"O'erbreath'd we come where, 'twixt impending hills,
Ran the joint current of two gurgling rills;
On either hand, adown each fearful steep,
Hung forth the shaggy horrors, dark and deep:
Here, thro' brown umbrage, glow'd the vivid green,
And headlong slopes, and winding paths between;
Growth above many a growth, tall trees arose,
The tops of these scarce veil'd the roots of those;
A winding court where wandering fancy walk'd
And to herself responsive Echo talk'd.
",,15428,•INTEREST. Metaphor of mind is here exterior?,"""The tops of these scarce veil'd the roots of those; / A winding court where wandering fancy walk'd / And to herself responsive Echo talk'd.""",Inhabitants,2013-06-04 16:48:01 UTC,""
5780,"","Searching ""throne"" and ""heart"" in HDIS (Drama)",2004-08-07 00:00:00 UTC,"The rigid laws of time, and place, our bard,
In this night's drama, ventures to discard:
If here he errs--he errs with him whose name,
Stands without rival on the rolls of Fame;
Him whom the passions own with one accord,
Their Great Dictator, and despotic Lord!
Who placed aloft on Inspiration's throne,
Made Fancy's magic kingdom all his own,
Burst from the trammels which his muse confined,
And poured the wealth of his exhaustless mind!
Though Shakspeare's flight no mortal shall pursue--
Columbus' story patronized by you,
Will yield an off'ring, grateful to his dust--
A British laurel on a hero's bust!",,15460,"","Shakespeare ""placed aloft on Inspiration's throne, / Made Fancy's magic kingdom all his own, / Burst from the trammels which his muse confined, / And poured the wealth of his exhaustless mind!""","",2009-09-14 19:43:42 UTC,Front Matter
5744,"",Searching in Past Masters,2011-05-19 21:04:32 UTC,"But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
(p. 128)",,18443,"","""All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.""",Empire,2011-05-19 21:04:32 UTC,""
5744,"",Reading,2013-04-22 03:47:15 UTC,"Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing they want every thing. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.
(pp. 88-9, 52-3 in Pocock ed.)",,20109,"","""Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.""","",2013-04-22 03:47:15 UTC,""
7389,"",Reading,2013-05-08 02:30:46 UTC,"[...] If he found his situation full of danger, (and I do not deny that it is perilous in the extreme) he must feel that it is also full of glory; and that he is placed on a stage, than which no Muse of fire that had ascended the highest heaven of invention, could imagine any thing more awful and august. It was hoped, that in this swelling scene, in which he moved with some of the first Potentates of Europe for his fellow actors, and with so many of the rest for the anxious spectators of a part, which, as he plays it, determines for ever their destiny and his own, like Ulysses, in the unravelling point of the epic story, he would have thrown off his patience and his rags together; and stripped of unworthy disguises, he would have stood forth in the form, and in the attitude of an hero. On that day, it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars; that he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous kennel (where his scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of war, whose fierce regards affright even the Minister of Vengeance that feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues, and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and virtue, are alien and abhorrent. It was expected that he would at last have thought of active and effectual war; that he would no longer amuse the British Lion in the chace of mice and rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval power of Great Britain, once the terrour of the world, to prey upon the miserable remains of a pedling commerce, which the enemy did not regard, and from which none could profit. It was expected that he would have re-asserted the justice of his cause; that he would have re-animated whatever remained to him of his allies, and endeavoured to recover those whom their fears had led astray; that he would have re-kindled the martial ardour of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which if this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false colour of a government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must for ever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most ignominious slavery of body and mind. In so holy a cause it was presumed, that he would, (as in the beginning of the war he did) have opened all the temples; and with prayer, with fasting, and with supplication, better directed than to the grim Moloch of Regicide in France, have called upon us to raise that united cry, which has so often stormed Heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings upon a repentant people. It was hoped that when he had invoked upon his endeavours the favourable regard of the Protector of the human race, it would be seen that his menaces to the enemy, and his prayers to the Almighty, were, not followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action. It was hoped that his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce a shew, but to sound a charge.
",,20171,"","""It was expected that he would have re-asserted the justice of his cause; that he would have re-animated whatever remained to him of his allies, and endeavoured to recover those whom their fears had led astray; that he would have re-kindled the martial ardour of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which if this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false colour of a government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must for ever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most ignominious slavery of body and mind.""",Fetters,2013-05-08 02:31:06 UTC,""
7389,"","Searching ""mind"" in OLL",2013-05-08 02:32:35 UTC,"Whilst every thing prepares the body to debauch, and the mind to crime, a regular church of avowed Atheism, established by law, with a direct and sanguinary persecution of Christianity, is formed to prevent all amendment and remorse. Conscience is formally deposed from its dominion over the mind. What fills the measure of horror is, that schools of Atheism are set up at the publick charge in every part of the country. That some English parents will be wicked enough to send their children to such schools there is no doubt. Better this Island should be sunk to the bottom of the sea, than that (so far as human infirmity admits) it should not be a country of Religion and Morals.",,20173,"","""Conscience is formally deposed from its dominion over the mind.""
","",2013-05-08 02:32:35 UTC,""