During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of e...xistence paralyzes me... To be alive is so incredible that all I can do is to lie still and merely breathe--like an infant on its back in a cot. It is impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men--especially pipers;... And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look at your [English] ladies of quality--are they not forever parting with their husbands--forfeiting their reputations--and is t...heir life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls--who have politeness, sense and conversation--but these are few--and then look at your trademen's daughters--what are they?--poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whore's lap, or in the orgasm of a volup...tuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte--there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet, Saxham, thou within thy gate Art of thyself so delicate,... So full of native sweets that bless Thy roof with inward happiness, As neither from nor to thy store Winter takes aught, or spring adds more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please;... Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, Go, look within, and ask if peace be there: If peace be his--that drooping weary sire, Of theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire, Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal ...relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the... healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse; independent; irresponsible; looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »