Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all. And another storm brewing, I hear it sing i' the wind. Yond same bla...ck cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Boasting is often carried by certain Americans to the extreme. Often however it is a reaction against slights, an effort to veil d...eficiencies, an effort made by a people aware of them, but on the other hand conscious of having accomplished in two or three generations what it took other nations centuries to perform. Generally, human nature revolts at taunts, at arrogant reproof, at undervaluation. Experience and time alone teach a becoming equanimity. European nations bear scoffing more patiently because they have thrown it occasionally for centuries at each other's head. Like old war horses accustomed to the roar of battles, they remain cool and self-possessed. There is on the American surface much to be rubbed off and rounded. Rude angles are to be soft ened, ease, flexibility instilled. Time must do the work. Refinement is a fruit slowly ripened by ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They mustn't know my despair, I can't let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn't bear their sympathy and their kin...d-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I'm showing off; when I'm silent they think I'm ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I'm tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You've always reminded me of a seagull, Jo. Strong and wild and fond of the wind and storms. And dreaming of flying far off to sea.... And Mother always said that I was like a little cricket. Chirping contentedly on the hearth, never able to bear the thought of leaving home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as the mother's womb holds us for ten months not in preparation for itself but for the region to which we seem to be discharg...ed when we are capable of drawing breath and surviving in the open, so in the span extending from infancy to old age we are ripening for another birth. Another beginning awaits us, another status. We cannot yet bear heaven's light except at intervals; look unfalteringly, then, to that decisive hour which is the body's last but not the soul's. All that lies about you look upon as the luggage in a posting station; you must push on. At your departure Nature strips you as bare as at your entry. You cannot carry out more than you brought in; indeed, you must lay down a good part of what you brought into life. The envelope of skin, which is your last covering, will be stripped off; the flesh and the blood which is diffused and courses through the whole of it will be stripped off; the bones and sinews which are the structural support of the shapeless and precarious mass will be stripped off. That day which you dread as the end is your birth into eternity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O you mighty gods! This world I do renounce, and in your sights... Shake patiently my great affliction off. If I could bear it longer, and not fall To quarrel with your great opposeless wills, My snuff and loathed part of nature should Burn itself out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Secrete us in reality. Discover A civil nakedness in which to be,... In which to bear with the exactest force The precisions of fate, nothing fobbed off, nor changed In a beau language without a drop of blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The kings of England formerly had their forests "to hold the king's game," for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to cre...ate or extend them; and I think that they were impelled by a true instinct. Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the earth,"Mour forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation,--not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true recreation? or shall we, like the villains, grub them all up, poaching on our own national domains?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »