Here in the country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it appeared as if every able...-bodied man and helpful boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure excursion in their yachts, and all would at last land and have a chowder on the Cape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women an...d girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers' wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher's ear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I was a boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I... came of age I embarked.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are a...ll sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hebraism contains no eternal realm of essence, which Greek philosophy was to fabricate, through Plato, as affording the intellectu...al deliverance from the evil of time. Such a realm of eternal essences is possible only for a detached intellect, one who, in Plato's phrase, becomes a "spectator of all time and all existence." This ideal of the philosopher as the highest human type--the theoretical intellect who from the vantage point of eternity can survey all time and existence--is altogether foreign to the Hebraic concept of the man of faith who is passionately committed to his own mortal being. Detachment was for the Hebrew an impermissible state of mind, a vice rather than a virtue; or rather it was something that Biblical man was not yet even able to conceive, since he had not reached the level of rational abstraction of the Greek. His existence was too earth-bound, too laden with oppressive images of mortality, to permit him to experience the philosopher's detachment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In private life he was good-natured, chearful, social; inelegant in his manners, loose in his morals. He had a coarse, strong wit,... which he was too free of for a man in his station, as it is always inconsistent with dignity. He was very able as a minister, but without a certain elevation of mind necessary for great good, or great mischief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions; he must see...m pleased, when he is very much otherwise; he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, honour, or prudence. Those... who violate it, may be cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Spirit is now a very fashionable word: to act with Spirit, to speak with Spirit, means only to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetl...y. An able man shows his Spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have know...n people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »