Most literature, nearly all literature, is distinctly subordinate and secondary; it only serves to pass the time of the learned or cultured class, without making any definite mark either on the mental habits of men and women, or on the institutions under which they live.
Morley critiques the impact of literature on society, suggesting it often lacks significance.
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Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.
True merit once resigned, No trick nor feint will serve as well.
A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.
They might learn how the true gentleman speaks of one whom he cannot but admit to have devoted a long life to the search of truth, and allow to have sacrificed every personal prospect to the promulgation of that which appeared to him as…
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