Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in 'f...oreign commerce' on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves--this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks... which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stai...rs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the "wrong crowd" read ...like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren't planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that a...lthough we can seldom add what will equal the generous first growths of our youth, yet friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than is commonly imagined, and not many years are required to make it mellow and pleasant. Warmth will, no doubt, make a considerable difference. Men of affectionate temper and bright fancy will coalesce a great deal sooner than those who are cold and dull.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine-glass to the light a...nd look judicial.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as... in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes ...us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »