Rich are the sea-gods:Mwho gives gifts but they? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:... They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. Every wave is wealth to Daedalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all t...hat he was permitted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
a child who traced voyages indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country... remembers the first river, the first field, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building, that new smell, and remembers the walls of the garden, the first light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;... Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam, And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies, The atlas-eater with a jaw for news, Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow's scream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone.... ...It reminded me of the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of Atlas, Vulcan, the Cyclops, and Prometheus. Such was Caucasus and the rock where Prometheus was bound. Ãâ schylus had no doubt visited such scenery as this. It was vast, Titanic, and such as man never inhabits. Some part of the beholder, even some vital part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends. He is more lone than you can imagine. There is less of substantial thought and fair understanding in him than in the plains where men inhabit. His reason is dispersed and shadowy, more thin and subtle, like the air. Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly, Why came ye here before your time? This ground is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human gall...s stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady ...it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »