The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it wa...s like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All stars stand close in summer air And tremble, and look mild as amber;... When wicks are lighted in the chamber You might say stars were settling there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In his green den the murmuring seal Close by his sleek companion lies;... While singly we to bedward steal, And close in fruitless sleep our eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The universe may or may not be very immense. As a matter of fact there are times when I am apt... To feel it close in tight against my sense Like a caul in which I was born and still am wrapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother... And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me that held me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For government, though high, and low, and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,... Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All I have to do is hear his name... and every hair on my body just bristles with desire. When I see the moon of his face, this frame of mine oozes sweat like a moonstone. When that man as dear to me as breath steps close enough to me to stroke my neck, the thought of jealousy is shattered in my heart that's hard as diamond sometimes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the pres...idential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emerson was the greater artist. His essays contain some of the most beautiful language in our literature. How Henry James could ha...ve thought he had never developed a "style" is to me one of the mysteries of criticism. Thoreau in Walden comes close to the master, but he falls behind in the homeliness of his details and in the occasional smugness of his social satire. It almost seems as if he were reacting against the chiseled beauty of Emerson's prose. The latter's sentences were so fine that he needed nothing else. They became, like marble statues, part of the garden that was Concord. Their composer, serene, calm, detached, bland in speech and manner, the soft-spoken philosopher revered by all, did not often trouble himself on his strolls in the woods and along the river to pluck the flowers or feed squirrels or even identify the different species of flora and fauna. As Thoreau observed, he wouldn't have been willing to trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets of Concord because it would have seemed out of character. Emerson communed with nature on a spiritual level, using his eyes to take in the landscape and his lungs the fresh air. He had no needs to brace himself with cold or rain or spend the night under the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »