I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, ...but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how.... In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Miss Dudley ... gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid- ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is d...oing there. She sails gaily along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second-rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have the same curves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is indolence ... indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to t...ake the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and... foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper?... I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a... clown; all's fish that comes to his net; he throws at all, and sweeps stakes; he's no mower that takes a nap at noon- day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn: he's neither squeamish nor queesy-stomach'd, for he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things into his ungracious maw; and tho' you can see no belly he has, he has a confounded dropsy, and thirsts after men's lives, which he guggles down like mother's milk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,... is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn't ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Family values are a little like family vacations--subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of tim...e. Though it rained all week at the beach, it's often the momentary rainbows that we remember.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next-door a baker's apprentice with his wife, an employee in a printing-shop, she has inflammation of the ovaries. Wonder what tho...se two get out of life? Well, first of all, they get each other, then last Sunday a vaudeville and a film, then this or that club meeting and a visit to his parents. Nothing else? Well now, don't drop dead, sir. Add to that nice weather, bad weather, country picnics, standing in front of the stove, eating breakfast and so on. And what more do you get, you, captain, general, jockey, whoever you are? Don't fool yourself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the foible especially of American youth,--pretension. The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not... make a speech, he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »