Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Samuel Egerton Brydges

English Poet, Bibliographer and Genealogist, Member of Parliament

"He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being."

"I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse."

"Duty by habit is to pleasure turned."

"The glory dies not, and the grief is past."

" In eddying course when leaves began to fly, And Autumn in her lap the store to strew, As ’mid wild scenes I chanced the Muse to woo Through glens untrod, and woods that frowned on high, Two sleeping Nymphs with wonder mute I spy! 5 And lo, she ’s gone! In robe of dark green hue, ’T was Echo from her sister Silence flew; For quick the hunter’s horn resounded to the sky! In shade affrighted Silence melts away; Not so her sister:—hark! for onward still 10 With far heard step she takes her listening way, Bounding from rock to rock, and hill to hill! Ah, mark the merry maid in mockful play With thousand mimic tones the laughing forest fill."

"Nil admirari is the motto which men of the world always affect. They think it vulgar to wonder, or be enthusiastic. They have so much corruption and so much charlatanism that they think the credit of all high qualities must be delusive."

"There is this value in books that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left "