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On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 119 of 236 (50%)

'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality...'

'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it:
if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it
would utterly be contemned.'

'The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of
wrought gold.'

'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty: they shall behold the
land that is very far off.'

'And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert
from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land.'

When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, those rhythms for its
dearest beliefs, a literature is surely established. Just there I find
the effective miracle, making the blind to see, the lame to leap. Wyclif,
Tyndale, Coverdale and others before the forty-seven had wrought. The
Authorised Version, setting a seal on all, set a seal on our national
style, thinking and speaking. It has cadences homely and sublime, yet so
harmonises them that the voice is always one. Simple men--holy and humble
men of heart like Isaak Walton or Bunyan--have their lips touched and
speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars,--Milton, Sir Thomas
Browne--practice the rolling Latin sentence; but upon the rhythms of our
Bible they, too, fall back. 'The great mutations of the world are acted,
or time may be too short for our designs.' 'Acquaint thyself with the
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