Word: oblivion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1880-1889
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...usually right: if it makes a favorite of one poet, it is because he has something to say or, at least, says nothing in an attractive manner; if it disregards another, we may find the reason in some defect which for the time or forever condemns him to oblivion. If Mr. Jones had but little joy in his life we can but grieve for him. It will not lighten his pain, now that he is dead, if his volume be thumbed ever so eagerly. But Mr. Perry makes no attempt to screen his new god's defects...
...cogent, more or less obscure or plain. First of all, this temper is a reaction against the spread eagle and unkempt oratory of frontier and semi-civilized congressmen in the old days whose deliverances in the Capitol were often grotesque and amusing - speech run mad and descending into oblivion in a very whirlwind of sound. Diseased oratory should give place to orators duly taught by our colleges, which exist to teach uses. It is treason to the republic to send untrained orators into the forum, since the will of many crystallized into laws and oratory is a supreme force...
...list of the features of this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, they were guided by true insight and good judgment. For what enthusiasm can be greater than that of the college graduate who returns to the scenes of his boyish escapades and of his scholastic hours. The independence and oblivion of college life is always a bright spot in his memory and the seeing once again makes the brightness turn to brilliant radiance and there arises an exhilaration and ecstacy which the undergraduate, steeped in his belief that all is vanity - not veritas - can never experience...
...they struggle for a while in the attempt to cultivate what they have not until finally they are swallowed up by the flood of time, all of their youthful energy expended in a vain contest with hunger, cold and deepest ignominy, all of their ambitions consigned, with themselves, to oblivion...
...history we find few prominent characters; for the vast majority of men the law of life is oblivion. We belong to the unknown, the unrecorded masses and one epitaph would do for all. This is one great law of man. A second is that the human race, left alone, tends downward. An old proverb says, "The majority are evil." Indeed it is a sad spectacle - the world tending to degradation. The history of the world is a record of degradations and deliverances. The world has fallen and there have come great heroes, agents of the Creator, to raise it again...