Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth ma...rking, in the lifetimes of many generations; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon--the most favored alternative method.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And anyone is free to condemn me to death If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence.... I shall will to the common stock of air my breath And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far e...xtended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.... The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The op...posite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and pro...fessional patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber.... He was not pious. He drank whiskey whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts and tried to save the Republic from them.... He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors. Inhabiting these States today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; there...fore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was evident that they had not advanced since the settlement of the country, that they were quite behind the age, and fairly rep...resented their ancestors in Normandy a thousand years ago. Even in respect to the common arts of life, they are not so far advanced as a frontier town in the West three years old. They have no money invested in railroad stock, and probably never will have. If they have got a French phrase for a railroad, it is as much as you can expect of them. They are very far from a revolution, have no quarrel with Church or State, but their vice and their virtue is content. As for annexation, they have never dreamed of it; indeed, they have not a clear idea what or where the States are. The English government has been remarkably liberal to its Catholic subjects in Canada, permitting them to wear their own fetters, both political and religious, as far as was possible for subjects. Their government is even too good for them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One thing is plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, here in America, is the home of man. After all th...e deductions which are to be made of for our pitiful politics, which stake every gravest national question on the silly die, whether James or whether Jonathan shall sit in the chair and hold the purse; after all the deduction is made for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which offers opportunity to the human mind not known in any other region.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To stand on common ground here and there gritty with pebbles... yet elsewhere 'fine and mellow-- uncommon fine for ploughing' there to labor planting the vegetable wordsLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »