Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: A Tale

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F.C. and J. Rivington and 6 others, 1816 - 205 sivua
 

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Sivu 125 - I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which prevails, as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth...
Sivu 33 - Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but, imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is not inconsistency. My father might expect a time of greater security. However, some desire is necessary to keep life in motion; and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
Sivu 122 - There is no part of history so generally Useful as that which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world.
Sivu 86 - I do not now wonder that your reputation is so far extended ; we have heard at Cairo of your wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this young man and maiden in the choice of life. :'
Sivu 71 - The causes of good and evil, answered Imlac, are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating.
Sivu 49 - There is so much infelicity," said the poet, " in the world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the coiriparative happiness of others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction ; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when...
Sivu 92 - To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things." The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest...
Sivu 47 - They are more powerful, Sir, than we, (answered Imlac,) because they are wiser. Knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being.
Sivu 45 - He must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations — as a being superior to time and place.
Sivu 2 - According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

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