From time immemorial the men of the town have been famous seamen, and have divided their energies between fishing and hating the E...nglish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She has taken her passive pigeon poor, She has buried him down and down.... He never shall sally to Sally Nor soil any roofs of the town.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the consequence of this institution that not a school- house, a public pew, a bridge, a pound, a mill-dam, hath been set up,... or pulled down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor-house chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, and consider, at leisure, the wisdom and error of their judgments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For the most part, the town has deserved the name it wears. I find our annals marked with a uniform good sense. I find no ridiculo...us laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For splendor, there must somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the house may go brave, the members must be plainly clad, an...d the town must save that the State may spend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its ...jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appeciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platoni...st; and I am sure that no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are two classes of man, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality or attribute; the other considers it a power.... Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding--the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hard labor and spare diet they had, and off wooden trenchers, but they had peace and freedom, and the wailing of the tempest in th...e woods sounded kindlier in their ear than the smooth voice of the prelates, at home, in England.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »