Short quotes — Page 17

The English Mail-Coach, represented by Project Gutenberg #6359 in the volume The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc. The sentence follows the near-collision / dream-fugue sequence and is highly literary first-person prose, not an objective report of measured time.

An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751 first edition), represented by Project Gutenberg #15409. The capitalization follows the represented edition; the line is poetic reflection on mortality and social distinction.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, first edition 1747, represented by the Thomas Gray Archive. The famous line concludes a poem cataloguing the future troubles awaiting schoolboys; it is ironic poetic reflection, not a general recommendation against knowledge.

“Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes,” represented in Project Gutenberg #11254. The poem is comic mock-moral verse about Horace Walpole’s cat Selima; the gendered eighteenth-century joke remains historical literary language rather than a modern claim about women.

“A Broken Appointment,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem's speaker addresses an absent person; the line is retained as dramatic lyric context.

“An August Midnight,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The line is poetic speculation about nonhuman knowledge rather than a scientific claim about insect cognition.

“An August Midnight,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The five include the speaker and small creatures gathered around his writing table.

“De Profundis I,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem reflects on recurring seasons and a past bereavement; it does not prescribe a universal grief timetable.

“De Profundis I,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The passage belongs to one speaker's reflection on bereavement and seasonal return.

“How Great My Grief,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. It is a dramatic lyric statement and is not automatically read as direct autobiography.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The corpse comparison is figurative seasonal language inside the poem.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. Floral death is poetic seasonal imagery, not literal human bereavement.

“The Self-Unseeing,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The exclamation closes a poem of retrospective domestic memory and should not be detached from that remembered household scene.

Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, Chapter I, represented in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Project Gutenberg #73906. 'All society therefore is either for gain, or for glory' appears inside Hobbes's seventeenth-century argument from appetite, glory and self-interest; it is political anthropology/philosophy, not a modern empirical law of all relationships.

Leviathan, Part I, Chapter XIII, Project Gutenberg #3207. “And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” closes Hobbes’s list of consequences in the hypothetical condition where there is no common power able to keep people in awe. It remains a seventeenth-century political-philosophy argument about the state of nature, not a blanket empirical description of ordinary social life.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 10, 1815; the Library of Congress preserves and exhibits the wording.

Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825, Founders Online / National Archives. The sentence is item 10 in a short list of “canons of conduct” sent to his namesake relative; the archive currently labels the transcription an Early Access document rather than a final authoritative edition.

Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, reviewed against the public-domain Wikisource transcription. The error-of-opinion sentence follows Jefferson's distinction between differences of opinion and differences of principle during an appeal for republican political tolerance; it is historical political rhetoric rather than present-day legal doctrine.

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource 1776 sixth-edition transcription; Paine follows his warning that custom can make an error look right by observing that time often changes opinion where argument initially does not.

Common Sense (1776), “Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs.” The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated 1776 Wikisource transcription; Paine enlarges the stakes from a city or province to a continent and to posterity.

Common Sense (1776), Appendix, validated Wikisource scan leaf 48 / printed page 40. Paine argues that independence creates an opportunity to form a new constitution and writes that Americans have it in their power to begin the world over again.

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine frames the American dispute as involving principles of natural rights and human concern beyond one locality.

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented opening sentence is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine argues that familiarity can make a wrong practice appear right before public argument unsettles the custom.

Rights of Man, Part II, Project Gutenberg public-domain collection #3742. The line appears in Paine’s statement of independence from place or person while criticizing hereditary political privilege. The exact text is “my country is the world, and my religion is to do good,” not the later expanded attribution “all mankind are my brethren.”

Rights of Man, Part I, Conclusion; represented from Moncure Daniel Conway’s public-domain Project Gutenberg #3742 collection. The passage attributes national hostility to old systems of government rather than to an inevitable enmity between people.

Rights of Man, Part II; the surrounding passage attributes much ordinary social coordination to society itself.

Rights of Man, Part II; historical political argument about representative government and the rule of law.

Rights of Man; this sentence precedes Paine’s well-known cosmopolitan statement about country and doing good.

The Age of Reason, Part I, Chapter I, “The Author’s Profession of Faith”; Moncure Daniel Conway collected/edited text represented by Project Gutenberg #3743 and cross-checked against Wikisource. “My own mind is my own church” follows Paine’s rejection of compulsory institutional creeds and states his historical deist emphasis on individual conscience and reason; this collection does not flatten it into a context-free rejection of all community, worship or institutions.

The Age of Reason, Part I, Chapter I, “The Author’s Profession of Faith”; Moncure Daniel Conway collected/edited text represented by Project Gutenberg #3743 and cross-checked against Wikisource. “It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself” introduces Paine’s argument that infidelity consists in professing a belief one does not actually hold. It remains historical moral/religious argument about conscience and sincerity rather than modern clinical guidance about happiness.

Opening of The American Crisis No. I; Paine addresses perseverance during a difficult stage of the American Revolution.

Traditional English moral associated with the fable; wording is later than the ancient Greek tradition.

Toilers of the Sea, Preface, represented by Project Gutenberg #32338 in W. Moy Thomas's English translation. 'Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man' opens Hugo's triadic framing of Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables and Toilers of the Sea. It is translated authorial/literary framing, not a social-scientific taxonomy of every human struggle.

Candide, Chapter XXX, Project Gutenberg #19942, uncredited public-domain English translation. Candide says “that we must cultivate our garden” to Pangloss and Martin near the tale’s close after reflecting on the old Turk’s life of work. This is translated fictional dialogue and literary resolution, not Voltaire autobiography or a literal guarantee that work resolves every hardship.

The Conservation of Races, closing programmatic resolutions. The sentence belongs to Du Bois’s 1897 argument about race organization and human brotherhood; period racial concepts remain historical context rather than modern science.

The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Training of Black Men,” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence opens a longer passage in which Du Bois moves “across the color line” among Shakespeare, Balzac, Dumas, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius; the context is Black cultural and intellectual dignity under segregation.

The Souls of Black Folk, Forethought and repeated later in the book. The phrase is a historical diagnosis of racism, segregation and the aftermath of slavery, not a generic statement about interpersonal difference.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; this statement begins a sequence of increasingly expansive declarations about the speaker’s place in the universe.

Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself.”

Song of Myself, section 1 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 29 (Wikisource scan page 35). The retained wording “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” is not the 1855 first-edition opening, which reads only “I celebrate myself”; the synchronized source year is therefore corrected from 1855 to 1882.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line sits amid Whitman’s celebration of bodily and spiritual acceptance.

Song of Myself, in the passage describing the road each person must travel for themselves.

Near the close of “Song of Myself”; Whitman turns self-expression into a large, physical cry.

Song of Myself, section 21 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 45 (Wikisource scan page 51). The line opens Whitman’s section joining bodily and spiritual experience; this locator is specific to the represented 1882 textual state.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 14 (Wikisource scan page 20). The sentence follows Whitman’s warning against taking things at second or third hand and against looking only through another person’s eyes; the reviewed locator is edition-specific.

Song of Myself, in the passage celebrating the body and the speaker’s delight in his own existence.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line follows “I exist as I am, that is enough,” which already exists separately in this collection.

Song of Myself, in Whitman’s catalogue of equal wonders.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line belongs to Whitman’s intentionally expansive, bodily-spiritual poetic voice and should be read as poetry rather than literal theological doctrine.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; Whitman immediately compares this unapologetic stance with elementary laws that never apologize.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 55 (Wikisource scan page 61). The verbal passage is present there, while this collection retains the more familiar later punctuation/parenthetical presentation. Later editions number this movement section 51; that section number is cross-edition orientation only and is not presented as 1855 structure.

Leaves of Grass (1882), “Song of the Broad-Axe,” section 4; Wikisource 1882 transcription. The line appears after “And the dead advance as much as the living advance” and before Whitman turns from institutions and structures toward the personal qualities he says endure.

Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road,' section 5 in the represented 1882 Leaves of Grass text. 'I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness' follows the speaker's declaration of being loosed from imagined limits. It remains poetic first-person self-discovery rather than empirical psychology.

Leaves of Grass (1860), poem “Walt Whitman’s Caution,” represented on Wikisource from the 1860 edition.

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Style,” printed page 21 in the Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. “in literary as in all other art, structure is all-important” introduces Pater’s architectural account of composition, where a work’s end is foreseen in its beginning and each part remains conscious of the rest.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. The following sentences extend the point across periods and schools of taste.

The Renaissance, “The School of Giorgione”; Project Gutenberg #2398. The surrounding paragraph explains that other arts strive to reduce the separation between matter and form.

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. This is an aesthetic-philosophical thesis, not a universal empirical rule for how everyone ought to live.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398, represented sixth-edition text. The phrase introduces Pater’s method of aesthetic criticism.

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The metaphor belongs to Pater’s aesthetic philosophy and should not be reduced to generic productivity advice.

Marmion, Canto VI, stanza XVII, Project Gutenberg #4010, transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!” is the narrator’s moral comment as Marmion realizes that his own intrigue is closing around him. It remains narrative commentary inside Scott’s historical romance in verse rather than a standalone empirical rule.

The Lady of the Lake, Canto V, “The Combat,” stanza X, Project Gutenberg #45888. Fitz-James says “Come one, come all!” with his back against a rock after Roderick Dhu’s signal reveals armed followers around him. The defiant rock image is fictional martial speech in Scott’s historical romance in verse rather than current safety, combat or self-help advice.

No Name, Project Gutenberg #1438. Mr Pendril speaks after the Vanstone sisters lose their legal and financial position; the surrounding dialogue immediately qualifies the hope as uncertain and dependent on future events.

The Moonstone, Project Gutenberg #155. Franklin Blake narrates his attempt to recover after leaving England; the sentence continues by explaining the effects of time, distance and novelty. This is fictional reflection, not clinical guidance.

The Woman in White, Third Epoch, ‘The Story Continued by Walter Hartright,’ section II, Project Gutenberg #583. Walter tells Marian ‘The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?’ while they assess Count Fosco after Marian reports his warning. It remains fictional moral reasoning about a particular antagonist rather than an empirical rule about human behavior.

My Ántonia, Book V, Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #242. Jim Burden returns to the old road that first carried him and Ántonia into Nebraska and concludes that whatever they missed, they still possess “the precious, the incommunicable past.” The sentence is retrospective fictional narration about shared memory, belonging and time, not a psychological law.

The Song of the Lark, Part VI, Chapter X, Project Gutenberg #44. ‘Artistic growth is... a refining of the sense of truthfulness’ is narrator reflection immediately after Harsanyi calls passion the artist's ‘open secret’ and as Thea Kronborg comes into fuller command of her mature performance. It belongs to Cather's fictional account of artistic formation and performance, not an empirical measurement of artistic development or a guarantee that all artists mature in the same way.

Opening of “Auguries of Innocence”; Blake places vastness inside tiny natural forms.

Short poem commonly titled “Eternity”; Blake contrasts grasping with the passing movement of joy.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell,” represented by Project Gutenberg #45315 at printed page 16. Gutenberg regularizes the line to “imagined”; Blake’s engraved text is often transcribed with historical spelling and punctuation. The proverb is part of Blake’s deliberately paradoxical infernal-wisdom sequence, not a literal claim that every imagined thing will eventually be proved.

“Proverbs of Hell.”

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell”; Blake presents the line as a deliberately paradoxical aphorism about experience and limits.

“Proverbs of Hell.”

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14; Blake’s prose-poetic argument about the limits and cleansing of perception.

“Light Shining out of Darkness,” first published in 1774 and later included in Olney Hymns; represented by the Cowper & Newton Museum. The line is explicitly Christian devotional poetry about providence, not evidence that every hardship has a knowable beneficial purpose.

The Task, Book I, represented by Project Gutenberg #3698. “God made the country, and man made the town” appears in Cowper’s didactic contrast between urban fashion and rural life immediately before claims about health and virtue in fields and groves. It remains eighteenth-century poetic and Christian-inflected judgment rather than empirical evidence that country living is healthier or more virtuous.

“The Battlefield,” represented in Project Gutenberg #29700. The line belongs to a civic-religious meditation on conflict, sacrifice and moral endurance; its resurrection imagery expresses poetic conviction rather than a literal law of history.

“To a Waterfowl,” represented in Project Gutenberg #29700. The closing lines explicitly infer providential guidance from the bird’s flight; the claim remains Christian-inflected lyric reflection, not evidence about supernatural intervention.

“Invictus,” first published in Henley’s 1888 Book of Verses (written 1875) and represented through the public-domain poem text. This is the second stanza’s closing line, following “Under the bludgeonings of chance”; this collection keeps the poem’s defiant lyric voice rather than treating it as a guarantee that adversity can always be mastered.

Closing lines of Invictus; Henley ends a poem about hardship with a statement of inner command.

“Margaritae Sorori,” represented by Wikisource. The poem is dated 1876 in collected-text traditions and was later gathered in Henley’s A Book of Verses (1888). It develops this serene evening scene into the speaker’s wish for an equally peaceful death; the single opening line is retained as nature imagery while the source note preserves the mortality context.

Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, “The Kingship of Self-Control.” Project Gutenberg #51469. The line belongs to late-nineteenth-century self-mastery literature and is not evidence that circumstance is irrelevant.

Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, later discussion of individual possibility. The sentence is motivational rhetoric about human potential rather than a measurable universal prediction.

Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, opening essay. Jordan’s language is philosophical and motivational, with period assumptions about agency that should not be substituted for modern psychological evidence.

The Majesty of Calmness, essay II, “Hurry, the Scourge of America,” Project Gutenberg #6911. Jordan contrasts purposeful haste with confused hurry and says that slow, careful foundation work can be quickest in the end. It is period moral rhetoric about overwork, pace and preparation rather than a universal productivity finding.

The Majesty of Calmness, “Failure as a Success.” The passage is motivational interpretation, not a promise that every loss will produce a better outcome.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan rejects the phrase “honesty is the best policy” as too transactional.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan introduces truth as the foundation of character.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan describes the speech of a person committed to truthfulness.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; the dash is retained from the represented public-domain text.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan contrasts truthful dealing with deliberately creating a false impression.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan distinguishes sincere error from deliberate untruthfulness.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; the “pure gold” comparison belongs to Jordan’s description of sincere speech.

The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; the sentence summarizes Jordan’s conduct-of-life definition of truth.

On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, first published March 1827. The sentence belongs to Hazlitt’s account of expansive youthful expectation and should not be treated as a literal claim of control over the future.

‘On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,’ opening of the essay first published unsigned in The Monthly Magazine, March 1827, represented in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Volume XII, Project Gutenberg #72206. ‘No young man believes he shall ever die’ opens Hazlitt's rhetorical account of youth's felt distance from mortality; it is historical essay reflection, not a literal claim about every young person.

The Round Table, No. 1, “On the Love of Life,” January 15, 1815. The phrase occurs inside Hazlitt’s broader argument that passions and projects strengthen attachment to life.

The Round Table, No. 1, ‘On the Love of Life,’ dated 15 January 1815 in the represented collected text, Project Gutenberg #55932. The sentence opens Hazlitt's argument that attachment to life is driven more by active passions than by present enjoyment and is immediately followed by ‘Without life there can be no action.’ It is philosophical-psychological essay argument, not modern clinical evidence.

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.