The Harvard Classics in a Year: A Liberal Education in 365 Days

by Amanda Kennedy

But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for settling many disputes relative to the senses, and their representative the imagination, we find that the principles are the same in all, and that there is no disagreement until we come to examine into the pre-eminence or difference of things, which brings us within the province of the judgment.

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may arise from a natural weakness of understanding, (in whatever the strength of that faculty may consist,) or, which is much more commonly the case, it may arise from a want of proper and well-directed exercise, which alone can make it strong and ready.

Deliberate practice

Before I leave this subject I cannot help taking notice of an opinion which many persons entertain, as if the taste were a separate faculty of the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a species of instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and at the first glance, without any previous reasoning, with the excellencies, or the defects, of a composition. So far as the imagination and the passions are concerned, I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted; but where disposition, where decorum, where congruity are concerned, in short, wherever the best taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the understanding operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in reality far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often far from being right.

It is known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not taken these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels all darkness from their minds.

High emotion, low thinking

jurisconsults, who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave comes a slave into the world, have in other words decided, that a man does not come a man into the world.

(Sparta alone expected, whose laws chiefly regarded the education of children, and where Lycurgus established such manners and customs, as in a great measure made laws needless,)

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare, And those that after some TO-MORROW stare, A Muezzi´n from the Tower of

Darkness cries, “Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!” XXVIII Another Voice, when I am sleeping, cries, “The Flower should open with the Morning skies.” And a retreating Whisper, as I wake— “The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”

“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

like Water willy-nilly flowing;

Easiest route

So when at last the Angel of the Drink Of Darkness finds you by the river-brink, And, proffering his Cup, invites your Soul Forth to your Lips to quaff it—do not shrink. XLVII And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, should lose, or know the type no more; The Eternal Sa´kì from that Bowl has pour’d Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour. XLVIII When You and I behind the Veil are past, Oh, but the long long while the World shall last,

You live as long as you’re remembered

The Flower that once is blown for ever dies.

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

Letter to the Corinthians 1:10-15ish, Paul disagrees and so do I

it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success.

It is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art, rather by the impression it makes—by the effect it produces—than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression.

A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect.

There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense.

Just as the intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty.

while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms:—waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity—her disproportion—her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious—in a word, to Beauty.

It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above.

And thus when by Poetry—or when by Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods—we find ourselves melted into tears not as the Abbate Gravia supposes through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

I believe this is my favorite sentence...

To recapitulate, then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.

I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of the sublime,—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem.

The intense melancholy, which seem to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet’s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul, while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness.

It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul, quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart, or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason.

He feels it in the beauty of woman, in the grace of her step, in the lustre of her eye, in the melody of her voice, in her soft laughter, in her sigh, in the harmony of the rustling of her robes.

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

three essential parts: of defining the terms of which we should avail ourselves by clear definitions; of proposing principles or evident axioms to prove the thing in question; and of always mentally substituting in the demonstrations the definition in the place of the thing defined.

Rules for Definitions I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained. Rules for Axioms I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admitted, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident of themselves. Rules for Demonstrations I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.

For definitions. Not to define any terms that are perfectly known. For axioms. Not to omit to require any axioms perfectly evident and simple. For demonstrations. Not to demonstrate any things well-known of themselves.

For it is unquestionable that it is no great error to define and clearly explain things, although very clear of themselves, nor to omit to require in advance axioms which cannot be refused in the place where they are necessary;

nor lastly to prove propositions that would be admitted without proof.

No need to prove an aciom

Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.

Rule necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.

Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove all propositions, and to employ nothing for their proof but axioms fully evident of themselves, or prop...

Never to take advantage of the ambiguity of terms by failing mentally to substitute definitions th...

two principles: to define all the terms of which we make use; to prove them all by mentally substituting definitions in the place of things defined.

The complex explained simply.

It is necessary therefore to show that there is nothing so little known, nothing more difficult to practise, and nothing more useful or more universal.

the spirit of discernment know how much difference there is between two similar words, according to their position, and the circumstances that accompany them.

Scylla,

Amphitrite

Charybdis

This he devised (having a mind to prove that the Oracle spoke falsely) in order that he might have twelve years of life instead of six, the nights being turned into days.

Sometimes we are moved by passion and count it zeal; we blame little faults in others and pass over great faults in ourselves.

He who would weigh well and rightly his own doings would not be the man to judge severely of another.

He who careth for neither praises nor reproaches hath great tranquillity of heart.