Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If he can't pretend that, he will look ...through the object, or round it, or above it or below it, or in any direction except into it. If, however, you force him to look into it, he will at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is w...ord-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I swore I would battle not only for myself but for freedom and opportunity for everything living that wore chains, especially s...ex chains. It that meant poverty for myself and my boy then poverty we should have to suffer. If it meant social ostracism, if it meant relinquishing the literary success that lay within my grasp, then let the success go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can't appraise the time in which we act. But for the folly of it, let's pretend... We know enough to know it for adverse. One more millennium's about to end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is "inseparable" from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech,... moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory..., inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection,--for recalling to, not for keeping in mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at all,--the Puritans. It would be in v...ain to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character,--his immortal life; and so it becomes your... cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death. "Misguided!" "Garrulous!" "Insane!" "Vindictive!" So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new, Good pennyworths,--but money cannot move:... I keep a fair but for the Fair to view,-- A beggar may be liberal of love. Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »