In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory--horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene--an...d something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And this, because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature,... but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is ... useful to distinguish between the pornographic, condemned in every society, and the bawdy, the ribald, the shared vulgar...ities and jokes, which are the safety valves of most social systems. Pornography is a most doubtful safety valve. In extreme cases it may feed the perverted imagination of the doomed man who starts by pulling a little girl's braid and ends by cutting off a little girl's head, as each increasing stimulus loses its effectiveness and must be replaced by a more extreme one. This is particularly true of the pornography primarily designed to be brooded over in secret. But is quite otherwise with the music hall jokes, the folk ribaldry at a wedding, the innocent smut of the smoking rooms, where men who are perennially faithful to their wives exchange stories which release explosive laughter. Pornography does not lead to laughter, it leads to deadly serious pursuit of sexual satisfaction divorced from personality and from every other meaning. The uproarious laugh of the group who recognize a common dilemma--the laughter of a group of women at the story of the intractable unborn who refused to budge and merely shivered under the effects of the quart of ice cream hopefully eaten by its poor mother, the laughter of a group of men at the story of the bride who asked to be "frightened" a fourth time--is the laughter of human beings who are making the best of the imperfect social arrangements within which their life here on earth is conducted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The normal family triangle, then, provides the daughter with a stage upon which to rehearse her separate identity. When the parent...s' marriage is relatively free of conflict, the daughter can go from one parent to the other for an emotional safety valve, to let off steam. Having equal, unambivalent access to both parents--and spared their competition for her loyalty--she can then concentrate not so much on dual allegiance as on simply growing up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets and the few narrow by-lanes and scattered farmsteads that constitute... this small, decaying watering-place which may, indeed, be called a "backwater of life" without disrespect to its natives who possess, to this day, a salty individuality of their own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Their leader was a handsome man about thirty years old, of good height, but not apparently robust, of gentlemanly address and faul...tless toilet; such a one as you might expect to meet on Broadway. In fact, in the popular sense of the word, he was the most "gentlemanly" appearing man in the stage, or that we saw on the road. He had a fair white complexion, as if he had always lived in the shade, and an intellectual face, and with his quiet manners might have passed for a divinity student who had seen something of the world. I was surprised to find, on talking with him in the course of the day's journey, that he was a hunter at all,--for his gun was not much exposed,--and yet more to find that he was probably the chief white hunter of Maine, and was known all along the road.... In the spring, he had saved a stage-driver and two passengers from drowning in the backwater of the Piscataquis in Foxcroft on this road, having swum ashore in the freezing water and made a raft and got them off,--though the horses were drowned,--at great risk to himself, while the only other man who could swim withdrew to the nearest house to prevent freezing. He could now ride over this road for nothing. He knew our man, and remarked that we had a good Indian there, a good hunter; adding that he was said to be worth $6000. The Indian also knew him, and said to me, "the great hunter."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »