The Threads of a Storm-sail: a Little Book on the Benefits of Assurance ...: Written at the Suggestion of the Directors of the Birkbeck Life Assurance Company

Framsida
1853 - 108 sidor

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Sida 41 - Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! — For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
Sida 49 - If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it of course only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree...
Sida 50 - ... men have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. There is a gentle but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading, well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of.
Sida 41 - Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Sida 50 - ... as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books.
Sida 50 - You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history — with the wisest, the wittiest — with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters that have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations — a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of...
Sida 31 - ... to blame the culture, not the soil;' if by rendering man more precipient of the order, harmony, and benevolence, which pervade the universe, we more effectually assert eternal Providence, and ' justify the ways of God to man ; ' and if thus we shall be the happy means of rendering it palpable, that the immortal essence within us, when freed from the deformity of ignorance and vice, has been created in the express image of God — then may we confidently hope that Omniscience will favourably behold...
Sida 30 - M'William, Esq. After the stone was laid, the president addressed the meeting in nearly the following words : — " Now have we founded our edifice for the diffusion and advancement of human knowledge. Now have we begun to erect a temple, wherein man shall extend his acquaintance with the universe of mind, and shall acquire the means of enlarging his dominion over the universe of matter. In this spot hereafter, the charms of literature shall be displayed, and the powers of science shall be unfolded...
Sida 40 - What is Hope ? A smiling rainbow Children follow through the wet ; 'Tis not here, still yonder, yonder : Never urchin found it yet. What is Life ? A thawing iceboard On a sea with sunny shore ; — Gay we sail ; it melts beneath us ; We are sunk, and seen no more.
Sida 30 - ... of heaven, I humbly trust, will not be implored in vain. If in this Institution we seek to obey the mandate which has gone forth, that knowledge shall be increased ; if we act in obedience to the injunction, that in all our gettings we should get understanding ; if we succeed in proving that for the existence of the mental wilderness, the continuance of which we all deeply deplore, we ought 'to blame the culture, not the soil...

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