Money indeed may be considered as the most universal and expressive of all languages. For gold and silver coins are no more money ...when not in the actual process of being voluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language. Pounds, shillings, and pence are recognized covenanted tokens, the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual purchasing power, but till in actual use they are only potential money, as the symbols of language, whatever they may be, are only potential language till they are passing between two minds. It is the power and will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and as long as they are in abeyance, the money is in abeyance also; the coins may be safe in one's pocket, but they are as dead as a log till they begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they begin to burn within us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harm...ony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The principal difference between childhood and the stages of life into which it invariably dissolves is that as children we occupy... a limitless present. The past has scarcely room to exist, since, if it means anything at all, it means only the previous day. Similarly, the future is in abeyance; we are not meant to do anything at all until we reach a suitable size. Correspondingly, the present is enormous, mainly because it is all there is.... Walks are dizzying adventures; the days tingle with unknowns, waiting to be made into wonders. Living so utterly in the present, children have an infinite power to transform; they are able to make the world into anything they wish, and they do so, with alacrity. There are no preconceptions, which is why, when a child tells us he is Napoleon, we had better behave with the respect due to a small emperor. Later in life, the transformations are forbidden; they may prove dangerous. By then, we move into a context of expectations and precedents of past and future, and the present, whenever we manage to catch it and realize it, is a shifting, elusive question mark, not altogether comfortable, an oddness that the scheme of our lives does not allow us to indulge. Habit takes over, and days tend to slip into pigeonholes, accounted for because everything has happened before, because we know by then that life is long and has to be intelligently endured.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. ... My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at where they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check without original energy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No skilled hands caress a stranger's flesh with lucid oil before... a word is spoken no feasting before a tale is told, before the stranger tells his name.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »