We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of fa...milies traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land.... The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know wha...t to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one's self.... All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction ... [ellipses in source]LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-g...ranted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we--because we don't question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over ... I would see belo...w all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there--over the edge, and below--but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I somehow always have this idea that as soon as I can get through this work that's piled up ahead of me, I'll really write a beaut...iful thing. But I never do. I always have the idea that someday, somehow, I'll be living a beautiful life. And that, too ... [ellipsis in source]LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Making the best of things is ... a damn poor way of dealing with them.... My whole life has been a series of escapes from that qui...cksand [ellipses in source].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual... responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was not seen that woman's place was in the home until she began to go out of it; the statement was a reply to an unspoken chall...enge, it was attempted resistance to irresistible change.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety... and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »