Attempts at Truth

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Trübner & Company, 1882 - Immortality - 248 pages

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Page 243 - WHY should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die,* Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh...
Page 174 - there was no matter,' And proved it — 'twas no matter what he said: They say his system 'tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head ; And yet who can believe it? I would shatter Gladly all matters down to Stone or lead, Or adamant, to find the world a spirit, And wear my head, denying that I wear it.
Page 50 - A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.
Page 9 - The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same, — a feeling' in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which, in properly cultivated moral natures, rises in the more serious cases into shrinking from it as an impossiLility.
Page 233 - ... for every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the brain...
Page 57 - The gravity, solidity, age, and probity of so great an emperor, who through the whole course of his life, conversed in a familiar manner, with his friends and courtiers, and never affected those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander and Demetrius.
Page 241 - God! — Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever.
Page 138 - The wages of sin is death : if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly ? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
Page 246 - Back to thy hell ! Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel; Thou never shall possess me, that I know: What I have done is done; I bear within A torture which could nothing gain from thine : The mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts...
Page 177 - ... world, I dare say, mean no more), then I am more certain of matter's existence than you or any other philosopher pretend to be. If there be anything which makes the , generality of mankind averse from the notions I espouse, it is a misapprehension that I deny the reality of sensible ; things...

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