In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carload...s of ungainly-looking farming tools.... I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock,... and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveal...s that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all... other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France, and at the most important period of our history, Catherine de' Medici has suffered more from popular error than any oth...er woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Frédégonde; while Marie de' Medici, whose every action was prejudicial to France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name.... Catherine de' Medici ... saved the throne of France, she maintained [the] Royal authority under circumstances to which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Face to face with such leaders of the factions and ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two Cardinals de Lorraine and the two "Balafrès," the two Princes de Condé, Queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, the Connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, the Colignys and Théodore de Bèze, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the fire of the Calvinist press.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have tried so hard to adulterate our hearts, and have so greatly abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and sh...ameful warts which cover them and which we take pleasure in magnifying, that it is impossible for us to speak the language of other men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »