"Immortality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... drawers, was a large Bible, and on the wall just above was a glass case of shabby sea-birds, their eyes so placed that they appeared to be looking up from Holy Writ with a look of such fatuous rapture that one's idea of immortality became associated with bodies dusty, stuffed, and wired. (Oh, the wind and the rain!) Yet there was left the bar-parlour; and there, usually, was a dim lamp showing but a table with assorted empty mugs, a bar with bottles ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... affairs, a corporation lawyer,—although he resembled a big and genial professor of Scandinavian extraction. He wore round, tortoise-shell spectacles, he had a high, dome-like forehead, and an ample light brown beard which he stroked from time to time. It is probable that he did not believe in the immortality of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... day, when so many are eager to write, and confident that they can write, and when the press is sending forth by the ton that which is called literature, but which somehow lacks the imprint of immortality, it is of the first importance to revive the study of synonyms as a distinct branch of rhetorical culture. Prevalent errors need at times to be noted and corrected, but the teaching of pure English speech is the best defense against ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... believer without owning it; he must have had his certainty from Scripture; all the reason he boasts can only shew it probable, and that probability is loaded with so many difficulties as will much weaken hope. Where can reason say immortality shall stop? We must allow that Omnipotence may bestow it on such ranks of being as he pleases. But how can reason tell us to whom he has given it? Whether to all creation, or no part of it? Pride indeed makes man claim ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... is the price too hard to give? Thine is the splendour of all things that live, And this thy pain the price of life to thee— The sacrament that binds to the beloved, The chain that holds though mountains be removed, The portent of thine immortality. ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... would never be able to get his papers in order again in a twelve-month. Upon this my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? and he told her, that he was "seeking for immortality"; which made her think, more than ever, that the poor old gentleman's head ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... freedom;—when we reflect on this thankless result of so much labor and talent, it seems wonderful that there should still be found high and gifted spirits, to waste themselves away in such temporary struggles, and, like that spendthrift of genius, Sheridan, to discount their immortality, for the payment of fame in hand which these triumphs of the day ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... of this passage is not quite so obvious as it seems. He has in his mind the words, "He saved others, Himself He cannot save," and, applying this to Sappho, asks, "Why did she who conferred immortality on herself by her verse prove herself mortal?" Without Fame, and without verse the cause and keeper of Fame, there is no heaven, no immortality, for the sons of men. But what security is there for the eternity of verse and Fame? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... is good and well said,' replied the prince. 'The life of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead us to a real life, to happiness and immortality.' ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... have been revived in him. His characteristics as a sculptor are severe simplicity, perfect beauty in form, distinctness, and repose. Thiele says of him: "He has challenged and has received the decision of the world's Supreme Court, that his name shall stand on the rolls of immortality. And if his life might be embodied in a single emblem, perhaps it should be that of a young lion, with an eye that glows and flashes fire, while he is bound with ivy and led by the hand of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... was the Scott of America, the man who, by turning his own history into great romance, gave it immortality. Many years have passed since the first publication of these books, and there have been many imitators, but their merits still ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... seek happiness solely in this world, for after death there only existed the infinite life of matter with its endless combinations, but the human being was effaced as entirely as a plant or an animal—he fell into oblivion when he sank into the tomb. Immortality of the soul was one of the illusions of human pride worked up by religions, who laid their foundations on this lie. It was only in this life that man could find heaven. Everyone embarked on immensity in the same ship, the earth. We were all comrades in our dangers and our struggles, and we ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ears of this poor wretch words of comfort and grace; to rend away from him the garment of sullenness and despair in which he had wrapped himself; to drag from him a confession of his unworthiness, his obstinacy, and his hasty judgment, and to cheer his fainting soul with promise of immortality and justice, he might have been saved from his after fate; but there was no such man. He asked for the chaplain. North was fighting the Convict Department, seeking vengeance for Kirkland, and (victim of "clerks with the cold spurt of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... numbers of intelligent readers of whom New World boasts a series of those great and undying romances which, since 1784, have received the crown of merit awarded by the French Academy—that coveted assurance of immortality in ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... we Christians look upon death with feelings so widely different? Why, when life and immortality have been brought to light in the gospel, are the mementoes of mortality more painful and saddening to us than they were to these pagans who had no hopes of a resurrection? It seems a paradox, but the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the herbs of Saint John; the worship of fountains; the worship of trees, and medical prescriptions. Even more, what Guizot calls their "noblest characteristic, a general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in the immortality of the soul," was less a particular doctrine of their own than a sentiment innate in the race; "they had only to develop ideas the germ of which had not been imported by them." Nevertheless, so well organized was their communal order that they were, before the Roman epoch, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... devil! And the best thing he ever did, the best luck he ever had, was attracting the attention of a young artist. It's immortality just to be painted by Velasquez; the only immortality many a famous man of the time ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... affirm that I have never seen human nature carried nearer to perfection than it was in his soul; if I was not convinced of the truth of a future state, I should become mad with the idea that such a being could have ceased to exist. There was so much of immortality in his thoughts and feelings, that it happens to me a hundred times, whenever I feel emotions that elevate me above myself, I believe I still ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... of the mercy of God," the shade replied; "for immortality could be enjoyed but meagrely on earth, where natural limitations are so abrupt. And know this, ye who are something of chemists, that had Adam eaten of that substance called fruit, he would ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... of the sources or causes of the crisis you are judging, for no one who knows will tell you, and you would not know if you were told. The depths of elemental immortality, of self-deceit and revenge, lie in our eagerness to judge one another, and to force one another under the yoke of our judgments. When there is the faith of the Son of man in the world, life will be left to make its own judgments. The only judgment we ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... hasty entanglement had limited his possibilities of happiness in one direction, and he felt that there was a certain grandeur in the recompense of working out his defeated instincts through the ambitious medium of his noble art. Had not Pharaohs chosen it to proclaim their longings for immortality, Caesars their passion for pomp and luxury, and the priesthood to symbolize their conceptions of the heavenly mansions? His dreams were on a grand scale; such, after all, are the best possessions of youth. Had he but been free, or mated with a nature akin to his own, he would have felt himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... mean? Oh, you are thinking of immortality, and all that," said Paula. "It's a chilly, ghostly subject. It makes me shiver. I get little ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... or Life, Death, and Immortality, revised and collated with the early Quarto Editions, with a Life of the Author by Dr. Doran. This new, handsomely printed, and carefully edited reprint of the great work of this noble and original writer, is rendered more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... the world also has its eschatology. The Christian view, however, is positive, where that of science is negative; ethical, where it is material; human, where it is cosmogonic; ending in personal immortality, where this ends in extinction and death. The eschatology of Christianity springs from its character as a teleological religion—it seeks to grasp the unity of the world through the conception of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Verborum, printed at Treviso by Bernard de Colonia, 1477, folio. I do not remember to have before seen any specimen of this printer's type: but what he has done here, is sufficient to secure for him typographical immortality. This is indeed a glorious copy—perfectly large paper—of an elegantly printed book, in a neat gothic type, in double columns. The first letter of the text is charmingly illuminated. I shall conclude these miscellaneous articles ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... solar character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever. There are various legends ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... interesting book. It would not surprise us if it turns out to be the most interesting novel of the season, for it contains one character, at least, who has in him the root of immortality, and the book itself is ever exhaling the sweet savour of the unexpected.... Plot is forgotten and incident fades, and only the really human endures, and throughout this book there stands out in bold and beautiful relief its high-souled and chivalric protagonist, ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should make us think more and more highly of ourselves as human—as men—living things that think. We must look to ourselves to help ourselves. We must think ourselves into an earthly immortality. By day and by night, by years and by centuries, still striving, studying, searching to find that which shall enable us to live a fuller life upon the earth—to have a wider grasp upon its violets and loveliness, a deeper draught of the sweet-briar ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... with their own inordinate vanity, grow stern and harsh with making sacrifices to the stone idol, grinding down their own hearts in vain experimenting after properer pigments, whereby themselves may attain to a chill and profitless immortality. But there are others still, who, elevating Art into a grand divinity, bow down and worship it, devote their lives to its priesthood, and, as a reward, only ask the god to reveal to them once his unveiled effulgence, content with the one communion, though their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and truest panegyric of Ariosto was written by Voltaire when he was sixty. If he had not made this apology for the rash judgement of his youthful days, he would not have enjoyed, in Italy at all events, that immortality which is so justly his due. Thirty-six years ago I told him as much, and he took me at my word. He was afraid, and he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bend his mind's eye on the space beyond the grave; nor could hide from himself how justly he ought to dread Heaven's vengeance. In this Labyrinth of terrors, fain would He have taken his refuge in the gloom of Atheism: Fain would He have denied the soul's immortality; have persuaded himself that when his eyes once closed, they would never more open, and that the same moment would annihilate his soul and body. Even this resource was refused to him. To permit his being blind to the fallacy of this belief, his knowledge ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... to the more specific topics of his religious teaching, freedom, immortality, God, Kant is prompt to assert that these cannot be objects of theoretical knowledge. Insoluble contradictions arise whenever a proof of them is attempted. If an object of faith could be demonstrated it would cease to be an object of faith. It would have been brought down out ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy ... And those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... forgotten and the other increased. Since death is a natural thing, and for the most part befalls the father before the children, the sadness it causes gradually disappears; but love, instead of bringing us death, brings us life through the procreation of children, in whom we have immortality, and this it is which chiefly causes ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the pity that he has gone from among us before he had time to put the coping-stone upon his work. There is a beautiful passage in one of his own books in which he sees the spirits of gallant youth who died too young for immortality haunting the portals of the Elysian Fields, and the great shades come to the portal and talk with them. We venture to say that he is ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Santierra attained that cold paper-and-ink immortality. He was a South American of good family, and the books published in his lifetime numbered him amongst the liberators of that continent from ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... consume away slowly anything of a perishable nature in its body, metamorphosed herself into a swallow, and flew around the miraculous pillar uttering plaintive cries. Astarte came upon her once while she was bathing the child in the flame, and broke by her shrieks of fright the charm of immortality. Isis was only able to reassure her by revealing her name and the object of her presence there. She opened the mysterious tree-trunk, anointed it with essences, and wrapping it in precious cloths, transmitted ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... whose notes they so often heard amongst the sylvan beauties of Woodstock. The king was pleased with the poetry, and the young page became quite a favourite with him. He afterwards became known as the "Father of English Poetry." His name was Chaucer, and he achieved immortality by his "Canterbury Tales." He was not only successful in his own love affairs, but assisted John o' Gaunt with his, and was instrumental in obtaining for him the hand of Blanche of Lancaster, who had inherited from her father, the Duke of Lancaster, an enormous fortune, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuit to prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... is no such thing as thou supposest. Thou hast deserved the fire; and we should but do our duty, did we inflict it upon thee." With these and the like words in plenty he upbraided him, bending on him meanwhile a countenance as stern as if Epicurus had stood before him denying the immortality of the soul. In short he so terrified him that the good man was fain to employ certain intermediaries to anoint his palms with a liberal allowance of St. John Goldenmouth's grease, an excellent remedy for the disease of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... beyond all measure. She spins the cloud-silk for the King and Queen of Heaven, and presides over the weaving which maidens do on earth. It is for this reason she is called the Weaving Maiden. And if you go and take away her clothes while she bathes, you may become her husband and gain immortality." ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... who see it, for that older fashion yet of Immortality! And look upon us, Angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... help in hunting the magic boar his prison must be found, and this is done by animals, in accordance with a Maerchen formula, while the words spoken by them show the immense duration of his imprisonment—perhaps a hint of his immortality.[445] But he was also said to have died and been buried at Nantlle,[446] which, like Gloucester, the place of his prison, may have been a site of his widely ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... forth, like a taunt, among that company of phantom appellations. It was possible, then, to leave behind us something more explicit than these severe, monotonous, and lying epitaphs; and the thing left, the memory of a painted picture and what we call the immortality of a name, was hardly more desirable than mere oblivion. Even David Hume, as he lay composed beneath that "circular idea," was fainter than a dream; and when the housemaid, broom in hand, smiled and beckoned from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished—man must be intellectual. Nor, indeed, am I surprised that this feeling has so powerfully influenced our race; for the idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind, and on the discovery of truth, is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to man; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal. Indeed, when you consider what a man is who knows only what is passing under his own eyes, and what the condition of the same man must be who belongs ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... religion and prudence imposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part of Puritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpses through the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it has been rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with through Hawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustration of it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which he himself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Jessop surmises that these translations must have brought him in a very respectable sum, but Mr. Augustus Birrell, in his own inimitable way, expresses his doubt on the point. "I hope it was so," he writes, "but, as Dr. Johnson once said about the immortality of the soul, I should like more evidence ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... affections make for our species an existence separate from all the rest of creation. Thanks to them, we enjoy a sort of terrestrial immortality; and if other beings succeed one another, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... the hush-money for its future suppression, became the heaviest curse of the successful criminal. This criminal thirsted for literary distinction above all other distinction, with a childish eagerness, as for the amrecta cup of immortality. And, behold! there the brilliant bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, unclaimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose to claim it) by nobody; and yet for his life he durst not touch it. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... because of their historical and biographical details, as a chronicle of history, and of the heart of a profoundly sincere man. Their themes are, generally, the love of nature, of country life, friendship; together with gentleness, sensibility, melancholy, scorn for rank and wealth, dreams of immortality with posterity. His greatest successes with the public were secured by "Poor Liza," and "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter," which served as much-admired models for sentimentalism to succeeding generations. Sentimentality was no novelty ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... because they do not wish to shock too severely public opinion, which is prevailingly Christian. They have a service on Sundays; I have been there. At it they read verses from Dryden or other English poets on the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. They deliver a discourse on some point of morality, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... make their pathway from the Atlantic to the Pacific; thrice happy in death, for while he believed the liberties of his country imperishable and was cheered by visions of its constant advancement, he departed from this life in a full hope of a blessed immortality through the merits ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... (next month); Friedrich's new Letter (Breslau, 23d January 1759), demanding something more,—followed by the ODE just cited (Ib. lxxii. 402; lxxviii. 82, 92; or OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii. 20-24: &c.) alas, this is a very feeble kind of immortality, and Friedrich too well feels it such. All Winter he dwells internally on the sad matter, though soon falling silent on it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Crimean hospital, ordered to a post of almost certain death, only raised her hands to heaven and said, "Thank God!" she did not renounce her true position as woman, she claimed it. When the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized by him in stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her fair bosom the daggers aimed at his,—when the Countess of Buchan hung confined in her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for crowning Robert the Bruce,—when the stainless soul ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... these days of her decline exercises almost as much control over the mind of the world as she exercised over its territories in the days of her great empire. Cervantes in literature and Velazquez in art seem destined to secure for their country a measure of immortality that throws into the background the memory of such people as Carlos Quinto, Philip II., and those other lesser lights who made the name of Spain respected or detested throughout Europe and South America. If science and art are destined, as some altruists hope, ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... says: "The best motion picture dramas produced today are reproductions of literary classics. These films do not achieve immortality; they merely further assure the immortality of the original work. Why cannot a photodrama be produced that is fine enough to live on its own merit—why must the picture always seem to be secondary while literature and the drama continue ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... hung about his neck as a defence against the evil eye, and frequently he removed it and knelt before it, as did Louis XI before the leaden figures of saints which adorned his hat. He ordered a complete chemical laboratory from Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the water of immortality, by the help of which he hoped to ascend to the planets and discover the Philosopher's Stone. Not perceiving any practical result of their labours, he ordered, the laboratory to be burnt and the alchemists to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... these?" said Bernis, approaching him. "This bold and high-hearted resolution will not bring you death, but fame and immortality." ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... religious teachers. I wish with all my strength you believed as you once believed, that the Bible is a direct Revelation from God, making known to us, beyond all doubt, the Resurrection of the dead, the Immortality of the Soul, in a better world than this, and the presence with us of a Father who knows our wants, pities our weakness, and answers our prayers. But I believe you will one day regain your faith: you will come back to ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... no means improbable that Adam, if he had not fallen, would have been exempt from the dissolution of the body, yet this is not absolutely certain, and even if it were certain, his case would be an exceptional one: no inference as to the immortality of the animal creation could ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come; and the like: let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality, or continuance; for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration; and in effect the strength ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... I have been an atheist all my life. I have been over-bitter and destructive in my addresses. I have learned something here. I did not expect nor did I want to, but I have. I am now a believer in the immortality of the soul and I look forward to life instead of death. This has influenced my work, my life. Instead of a hundred words against human slavery to one for human freedom I speak a hundred for human freedom to one against human slavery. That may seem small to you. It's big to me—it's ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... songs their great artistic value. In their clean-cut, abrupt, epigrammatic force there is something different from the work of any other musical lyrist. So much has this impressed the students of the composer that more than one able critic has ventured to prophesy that Schumann's greatest claim to immortality would yet be found in such works as the settings of "Ich grolle nicht" and the "Dichterliebe" series—a perverted estimate, perhaps, but with a large substratum of truth. The duration of Schumann's song-time was short, the greater part of ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... piano. There will be no music on earth like the songs those throbbing strings shall make to my soul when they quiver beneath the touch of your hand. Here on this seat I shall lie by the window, looking out over the sea, dream and think great thoughts of life and death and immortality while you play for me. And with each passing year, dearest, the songs that you sing will be deeper and richer and more and more ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... exquisitely beautiful beings, fair miniatures of mortals, inhabited this charming region, wherein was assembled all that had power to inebriate the soul with pure and rapturous felicity, and imbue it with an intense perception of its immortality and blessedness. Now stole the faint, delicious sound of very distant bells—clear, silvery, and sweet—upon mine ear, as the tones of a well-touched harp: sad were they—luxuriously sad; and their unearthly melody infused into my bosom a repose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... of greater scientific substance and merit than his more famous work on "the powder of sympathy." Published in 1644 under the title Two Treatises, in the One of Which, The Nature of Bodies; in the Other, the Nature of Mans Soule; is Looked into, in Way of Discovery of the Immortality of Reasonable Soules, the book consists of a highly individual survey of the entire realms of metaphysics, ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... their innocence by braving, on the justice of their cause, those objects which inspired amongst their countrymen the greatest terror. The Sumatran, impressed with an idea of invisible powers, but not of his own immortality, regards with awe the supposed instruments of their agency, and swears on krises, bullets, and gun barrels; weapons of personal destruction. The German Christian of the seventh century, more indifferent to the perils of this life, but not less superstitious, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... like stragglers even to inspect the burial place.... They believe that the soul of a good Karok goes to the 'happy western land' beyond the great ocean. That they have a well grounded assurance of an immortality beyond the grave is proven, if not otherwise, by their beautiful and poetical custom of whispering a message in the ear of the dead.... Believe that dancing will liberate some relative's soul from bonds of death ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... regarded as friendly to the human race. Religions, laws, sciences, arts, theories, and histories, instead of passing Ariel-like into the elements when their task is done, are made perpetual prisoners in the alcoves of dreary libraries. They have a fossil immortality, surviving themselves in covers, as poems have survived minstrels. The memory of man is made omni-capacious; its burden increases with every generation; not even the ignorance and stolidity of the past are allowed the final grace of being forgotten; and omniscience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Phidias and Myron. It had fifty statues, one hundred Doric columns, ninety-two metopes, and five hundred and twenty-four feet of bas-relief frieze, thus realizing the highest dream of plastic art and the immortality of constructive genius. Within the inner sanctuary Phidias placed his chryselephantine figure of Athena Parthenos, the virgin, thirty-nine feet high, the flesh parts being in ivory and the garments of fine gold. It is estimated that this gold was worth ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... or Sarcostemma vinimalis, the plant known as the Soma to the Aryans of India, the Haoma to the Iranians, the crushed branches of which afford the intoxicating liquor offered as a libation to the gods, and identified with the celestial beverage of life and immortality. More generally, however, the plant has a conventional and decorative aspect, not answering exactly to any natural type, and it is this purely conventional form which the Persians have borrowed from ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the board the last alleviations of those unbeatable optimists who would soothe their aching souls with at least the drop of comfort: that if man is a mortal species, with not the slightest prospect of a continuing immortality, not to mention a glorious future and destiny, there are others. Man, after all, may be simply a bad habit Life will succeed in shaking off. No philosophy or religion can afford to be anthropocentric merely. It must include all life and all living things to which we are blood-related. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... they are not neglecting the duties of their proper callings, they may be allowed to detach their minds from earthly things, that by a fuller knowledge of heavenly objects, and a more habitual acquaintance with them, their hope may grow more "full of immortality?" Is the day cheerfully devoted to those holy exercises for which it was appointed? Do they indeed "come into the courts of God with gladness?" And how are they employed when not engaged in the public services ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... consummation of religion, the holy hope of life beyond the grave dawned in this night of suffering, gleaming toward the day of Him who brought life and immortality ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... also extremely suggestive to note how here as elsewhere Shakespeare promised Willie Hughes immortality in a form that appealed to men's eyes—that is to say, in a spectacular form, in a play that is to ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... Hebron by news of Sarah's death. And he came to mourn over her. The remembrance of her maiden beauty and modesty, the grateful recollection of all her conjugal devotedness, filled his soul. If light and immortality were brought to light in the gospel, still the divine rays were faintly reflected in the former dispensation, and the eye of faith even then penetrated the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... nothing definite about their immortality," said Mr. Harry. "However, we've got nothing to do with that. If it's right for them to be in heaven, we'll find them there. All we have to do now is to deal with the present, and the Bible plainly ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... immortality does not dwell in these thoughts?" said the priest. "All things are born to die save thought; and if in passing we leave but a single thought which will alleviate the sufferings of man or add beauty to his existence, one does not live and die in vain." Chaumonot's ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support; there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny,—whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the people,—our principles—are that faction—a faction to which I am devoted, and against ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... clearness of his mind and the vigor of his limbs indicated that he was likely to be one of those centenarians who carry their years so lightly that they make us think with regret of that golden age in which the gods could confer immortality upon man. His eye still flashed with all the ardor of youth; and in his breast glowed a fire which age was powerless to quench. Vauquelas had formerly been a magistrate in Arras. A widower, without a child for whose fate he was compelled ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... purpose becomes all the more significant when we realize that the effects of our teaching are not only to modify a life here of three-score and ten—they are impressions attendant throughout eternity. As the poet Goethe has said, "Life is the childhood of our immortality," and the teachings of childhood are what determine the character of maturity. The thought is given additional emphasis in the beautiful little poem, "Planting," by W. ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... capital, as a consequence, plays a part which grows daily more important. The limit to the development of credit is this: it is safe only when the debtor invests his borrowed goods in the production of, to say the least, their equivalent. This is why the personality of the state, clothed with immortality and with a formally boundless power of taxation, is so often seduced into engaging in transactions of credit which are never self-discharged.(535) The social diseases of panics and of extravagant enterprises stand in the same relation ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... intelligently you assumed the proper attitude. I didn't have to take you by the chin and twist your head as though you were a lay figure; I didn't have to pull you about and flex and bend and twist you. You knew that I wanted you to look like some sort of an ethereal immortality, deliciously relaxed, adrift in sunset clouds. And ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... reproaches of those who stand to me in the dear relation of children, whom I deserted in (p. 030) the smiling innocency of helpless infancy? Oh, Thou great unknown Power! Thou Almighty God! who hast lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the perfection of Thy works, yet Thou hast never left me nor ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... end, but works through him to greater issues.... This, I believe, will be the distinctive quality of the New Republican's belief. And, for that reason, I have not even speculated whether he will hold any belief in human immortality or no. He will certainly not believe there is any post mortem state of rewards and punishments because of his faith in the sanity of God, and I do not see how he will trace any reaction between this world and whatever world there may be of disembodied lives. Active and capable ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... all mankind—he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Americans (though less willing than the French) are willing to discuss creed, immortality, faith. There is nothing from which the Englishman more peremptorily recoils, although he hates well nigh as deeply all abstract discussion, or to be clever, or to have you be clever. An American friend of mine had grown tired of an Englishman who had been finding fault with ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... dispensations to man should be considered as a proof of our resurrection. The conclusion is that as before sin man was immortal, so being restored to the favor of heaven by the expiation made for sin, he necessarily recovers his claim to immortality. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... concerning itself must kill the soul, if there be one, with disgust at its own vileness, and the miserable contrast between its aspirations and attainments, its pretences and its efforts. At least, that would be the death fit for a life like mine—a death of disgust at itself. We claim immortality; we cringe and cower with the fear that immortality may not be the destiny of man; and yet we—I—do things unworthy not merely of immortality, but unworthy of the butterfly existence of a single day in such a world as this sometimes seems to be. Just think ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of Pharaoh lie upon thee in that land whither I go, Meriamun, and whither thou must follow swiftly. Thou didst slay Pharaoh, and Helen, who through thy guile is lost to me, thou wouldst have slain also, but thou couldst not harm her immortality. And now I die, and this is the end of all these Loves and Wars and Wanderings. My death has come upon ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... until a feature of the particular sinner peeped out on him, and brought the fresh agony of a reminder of his great-heartedness. 'For that woman—Tresten, you know me—I would have sacrificed for that woman fortune and life, my hope, my duty, my immortality. She knew it, and she—look!' he unwrinkled the letter carefully for it to be legible, and clenched it in a ball.' Signs her name, signs her name, her name!—God of heaven! it would be incredible in a holy chronicle—signs her name to the infamous harlotry! See: "Clotilde ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... applause. It was a hard nut to crack, and the last day I rehearsed the finale alone for three hours; but I in particular, and all the others, were fully rewarded by the performance. It is a work beside which no other can stand, and had you written nothing but this you would have gained immortality. Whither will ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... of Spinoza is of such importance historically that it is desirable to obtain a clear notion of its meaning. I have discussed this at length in two earlier works: "The Philosophy of Spinoza" (N.Y., 1894) and "On Spinozistic Immortality." The student is referred to the account of Spinoza's "God or Substance" contained in these. See, especially, the "Introductory Note" in the ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... detail of this sect, and you get an idea of what it must be from what I said of its founder. Its leading doctrine is the transmigration of souls, also called by that tough word, metempsychosis, though other Hindu systems adopt this belief. It seems to include the recognition of the immortality of the soul, which at the death of the body passes into another form of existence,—a man, a woman, a lower animal, or even a tree or other plant. The Buddha claims to have been born five hundred and fifty times,—a hermit, a slave, a king, a monkey, an elephant, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... contemporaries, however, is not always justified by the verdict of after-times, and does not always secure an immortality of renown. The fame of Sappho has a more stable basis. Her work was in the world's possession for not far short of a thousand years—a thousand years of changing tastes, searching criticism, and familiar use. It had to endure the wear and tear of quotation, ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... on this question of immortality, for the question is to know if the moi persists. The affirmative seems to me a presumption of our pride, a protest of our weakness against the eternal order. Has death perhaps no more secrets to reveal to us ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... out of present difficulties. That it is the Providential way out, is shown by most striking evidence: the diversion of the anti-Catholic forces from the attack against authority to one against the most elementary principles of religion—God, conscience, and immortality; the drift of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic minds of a religious cast towards the Church, calling for spiritual attractions in accordance with the independence of character peculiar to those races; the hopeless failure of the post-Reformation methods to meet ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... stone, to take a familiar example, was not a stone at all. The word was no more than a symbol, and covered a search for one of the great secrets—the origin of life, or the nature of matter, or the attainment of immortality. They seem to us to have taken a very roundabout route in their investigations, but their object was often very much the same as that of every chemist and biologist of the present day. Take alchemy, again, which ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Isocrates, was the beauty of Helen, that for her glory Zeus did not spare his beloved son, Sarpedon; and Thetis saw Achilles die, and the Dawn bewailed her Memnon. "Beauty has raised more mortals to immortality than all the other virtues together." And that Helen is now a Goddess, Isocrates proves by the fact that the sacrifices offered to her in Therapnae, are such as are given, not to heroes, but to ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... word, the Church, like a watchful mother, accompanies us from the cradle to the grave, supplying us at each step with the medicine of life and immortality. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... to me all the sins of omission of the whole world. The levity with which we can let fall into disuse such a sacrament as the exchange of greeting at short periods, is a kind of magnanimity, and should be an astonishing argument of the "Immortality"; and I wonder how it has escaped the notice of philosophers. But what had I, dear wise man, to tell you? What, but that life was still tolerable; still absurdly sweet; still promising, promising, to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Father, towards whom he stands in a closer and more affecting, and more endearing relationship than to any earthly father, and that Father is in heaven; that he has a hope, far transcending every earthly hope—a hope full of immortality—the hope, namely, that that Father's kingdom may come; that he has a duty which, like the sun in our celestial system, stands in the centre of his moral obligations, shedding upon them a hallowing light, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... with respect to whom Justin, like Philo, is a complete agnostic. The Holy Spirit is not regarded by Justin as a separate personality, and is often mixed up with the "Logos." The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul is, for Justin, a heresy; and he is as a believer in the resurrection of the body, as in the speedy Second Coming establishment of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of despair, all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground—that indeed is to come close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, and to look, if only for a ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the poet, and now a highly esteemed actress on the Danish stage; she, then a little girl, had also a part in it, and our names stood printed in the bill. That was a moment in my life, when my name was printed! I fancied I could see it a nimbus of immortality. I was continually looking at the printed paper. I carried the programme of the ballet with me at night to bed, lay and read my name by candle ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... inheritances of Europe. In his introduction to The Heidenmauer he wrote a sentence that stirred the wrath of the newspaper press of his own country: "Each hour, as life advances," he asserted, "am I made to see how capricious and vulgar is the immortality conferred by a newspaper." This provoked at home the retort "The press has built him up; the press shall pull him down!" He began to be bitterly attacked in some American newspapers, which accused him of "flouting his Americanism ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... with one Voice, this their Birthright, and to find it ratify'd by an express Revelation. At the same time if we turn our Thoughts inward upon our selves, we may meet with a kind of secret Sense concurring with the Proofs of our own Immortality. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Knox to open door, which he does, but which he immediately closes as she continues speaking.) There must be immortality. There must be a future life where you and ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... would have discovered that the hour was now half past seven, or nearly an hour later than he had planned. But Art, which is long-lived, recks little of Time, an evanescent thing. He was enthusiastic over his subject. He would make not one sketch, but two. That lake, like the gates, was worthy of immortality. Of course, the house must come first. He unpacked a canvas hold-all, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that I am immortal, only that I know better than others how to avoid danger; for instance, I would not remain here now alone with M. de Launay, who is thinking that, if he had me in the Bastile, he would put my immortality to the test of starvation; neither would I remain with M. de Condorcet, for he is thinking that he might just empty into my glass the contents of that ring which he wears on his left hand, and which is full of poison—not with any evil intent, but just as a ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... death, though solemn, has nothing dreadful in it; on the contrary, to a mind rightly disposed it is rather a desirable object. Just conceptions of God, and converse with him, will very soon change the aspect of the king of terrors to a welcome messenger, who comes to set open the gates of immortality, and to usher us into the kingdom of our heavenly Father. And now may our most gracious God grant you, through your few remaining days, his direction and consolation; may he bestow upon you that peace which the world can neither give ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... space which he appears to have been originally designed to fill—the gap in the great chain of being between the higher quadrupeds and the beings we are accustomed to regard as angelic. I would restore him to his true dignity. I would make him a child of God, and an heir of a glorious immortality. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as the cause of so much of the misery which he believed it to be his mission to avert. Caesar, in the speech put into his mouth by Sallust, in the debate on the execution of the conspirators on December 5, 63, seems to ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... a hidden but powerful sway over the dawning perceptions of the mind, and shape its thoughts to harmony with the things around, then most certainly ought Mr. Verdant Green to have been born a poet; for he grew up amid those scenes whose immortality is, that they inspired the soul of Shakespeare with ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... shall melt in gloom, the sun himself must die, before this mortal shall assume its immortality! I saw a vision in my sleep that gave my spirit strength to sweep adown the gulf of Time! I saw the last of human mould that shall Creation's death behold, as Adam saw her prime! The Sun's eye had a sickly glare, the earth with age was wan; the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... rein. Him Rabican, who marvellously flies, Distances by a mighty length of plain. This while the wizard's head Astolpho eyes From poll to front, above the eyebrows twain, Searching, in haste, if he the hair can see Which makes Orrilo's immortality. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... But do not let us fancy that our work must cease of necessity with our lives. Not so; far rather must we believe that it will continue for ever, seeing that we are all partakers of God's unspeakable blessing, the common mystery of immortality. Perhaps it may be the glorious destiny of very many here to recognise that truth more fully when we meet and converse with our dear departed brother in a ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... London," so well conceived and cleverly executed, that an archaeologist of considerable pretensions mistook it for a genuine historical record of the place on which it was written. His next work, and up till that period his noblest poem, "The Salamandrine, or Love and Immortality," appeared in 1843. As there is no hesitation in his thought, there is no vagueness in his language; it is terse, clear, and direct in every utterance. An enemy to spasms in every form, he abhors the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of creation had ever a fascinating influence upon the Bard of Avon, and all the outward manifestations of nature were infallible hints to him of the inward sources of the Divine, and an absolute belief in the immortality of the soul! His own mind was the best ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... journey, along precipitous tracks that were reported to be infested by brigands, we reached Coruna, where stands the tomb of Mocre, built by the chivalrous French in commemoration of the fall of their heroic antagonist. Many acquire immortality without seeking it, and die before its first ray has gilded their name; of these was Moore. There is scarcely a Spaniard but has heard of his tomb, and speaks of it with a strange ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the separation of church and state. Virginia followed next in 1785. For some time after in many states Protestant or at least Christian belief was necessary to obtain office. And even to-day some states require belief in God, in immortality, and in a future state of rewards and punishments. Massachusetts declared in her bill of rights not only the right but the duty of worship, and as late as 1799 punished neglect of church attendance. In the course of the nineteenth century ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... of Osiris. It was a sacred tree among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mohammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the Desert of Thur: and of it the "crown of thorns" was composed, which was set on the forehead of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a fit type of immortality on account of its tenacity of life; for it has been known, when planted as a door-post, to take root again and shoot out budding boughs over ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... knows that he will survive at the end of things, and be gathered by Fate as a jewel from the slime, and be handed with admiration round the assembly of the gods. "Men did produce this," they will say, and, saying, they will give men immortality. But meanwhile—what agitations meanwhile! The foundations of Property and Propriety are laid bare, twin rocks; Family Pride flounders to the surface, puffing and blowing, and refusing to be comforted; Theology, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster |
