In baseball there are generalists, who keep their eye on the ball and see the big picture; football is full of special-duty charac...ters who are very limited in terms of their range but have depth. Baseball represents America before the frontier ended, when there was plenty of space and plenty of time, and philosophic anarchists roamed around on verdant fields "doing their thing" with a free and reckless abandon. The game is relaxing and not particularly taxing on the players, who play many times each week. Football is tremendously difficult on the players and is so tiring that sixty minutes of clock time--which amounts to several hours of real time--exhausts them. Baseball developed when we thought nature was a limitless reservoir and we would always live in abundance. Football reflects a different world view; everything has to be fought for, resources are precious, hostile people (guards, monster men) are everywhere and in such a world you have to grab what you can.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine ...under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot; the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a pastoral game, baseball attempts to close the gap between the players and the crowd. It creates the illusion, for instance, t...hat with a lot a hard work, a little luck, and possibly some extra talent, the average spectator might well be playing; not watching. For most of us can do a few of the things that ball players can do: catch a pop-up, field a ground ball, and maybe get a hit once in a while.... As a heroic game, football is not concerned with a shared community of near-equals. It seeks almost the opposite relationship between its spectators and players, one which stresses the distance between them. We are not allowed to identify directly with Jim Brown any more than we are with Zeus, because to do so would undercut his stature as something more than human.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw.... They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball:... And tear our pleasures with rough strife, Thorough the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.... My other beats a tin drum in my heart. My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep. My other cries and cries and cries when I put on a cocktail dress.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let's take the instant by the forward top; For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees... Th' inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals ere we can effect them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes,... Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law-- Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have heard that a few days after this, when the Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy emissaries from Provincetown made particul...ar inquiries concerning us at this lighthouse. Indeed, they traced us all the way down the Cape, and concluded that we came by this unusual route down the back side and on foot in order that we might discover a way to get off with our booty when we had committed the robbery. The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare withal, that it is well-nigh impossible for a stranger to visit it without the knowledge of its inhabitants generally, unless he is wrecked on to it in the night. So, when this robbery occurred, all their suspicions seem to have at once centered on us two travelers who had just passed down it. If we had not chanced to leave the Cape so soon, we should probably have been arrested. The real robbers were two young men from Worcester County who traveled with a centre-bit, and are said to have done their work very neatly. But the only bank that we pried into was the great Cape Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of an old French crown piece, some shells and pebbles, and the materials of this story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »