Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is interior. In Prometheus the wi...ll is securely nailed down by nails of brass and cannot get loose; besides, it has by its side two watchers--Force and Power. In Hamlet the will is more tied down yet; it is bound by previous meditation--the endless chain of the undecided. Try to get out of yourself if you can! What a Gordian knot is our reverie. Slavery from within, that is slavery indeed. Scale this enclosure, "to dream!" escape, if you can, from this prison, "to love!" The only dungeon is that which walls conscience in. Prometheus, in order to be free, has but a bronze collar to break and a god to conquer; Hamlet must break and conquer himself. Prometheus can raise himself upright, if he only lifts a mountain; to raise himself up, Hamlet must lift his own thoughts. If Prometheus plucks the vulture from his breast, all is said; Hamlet must tear Hamlet from his breast. Prometheus and Hamlet are two naked livers; from one runs blood, from the other doubt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power,... How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays? O fearful meditation, where alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I would find by the edge of that water The collar-bone of a hare... Worn thin by the lapping of water, And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare At the old bitter world where they marry in churches....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man who would change the name of Arkansas is the original, iron-jawed, brass-mouthed, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wil...ds of the Ozarks! He is the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on his mother's side!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and... throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No stout Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought... No brass fortissimo, among our talents, To holler down the lions in this air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of t...hose candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as tha...t useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressionsLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »