As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its edge, ...or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like a wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which yet inhabits these bright American waters with us Yankees. There is something venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks, too, are still visible on the stones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill... of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Bok is giving the bird sanctuary as a tract of land at this place. He is dedicating it as a bird sanctuary and putting up thes...e bells to interest the birds in music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason the...y don't get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat's cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot st...raightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I prefer not to have among my guests two people or more, of any sex, who are in the first wild tremours of love. It is better t...o invite them after their new passion has settled, has solidified into a quieter reciprocity of emotions. (It is also a waste of good food, to serve it to new lovers.)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »