Man scripturient, today, means man subservient. He is almost anachronistically nowadays in the same position as a miller or a musi...c-hall juggler or a chimney sweep. He is treated like a bastard at a family reunion. For one thing, no one believes that a writer actually writes. (Try to use writing, for instance, as an excuse for begging off a party some weekend.)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I first took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on In...dependence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue,... Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself;... But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully unti...l she finds it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is an old saying in the town that "most any fellow with a chaw in his jaw can sit on his front porch and spit down the chimney ...of a neighbor's house."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I change, and so do women too; But I reflect--which women seldom do.... Tobacco is a filthy weed, That from the devil doth proceed; That drains your purse, that burns your clothes, That makes a chimney of your nose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is... not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gi...ves forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »