I wish, said Mr. [Fulke] Greville, men would not pretend to write of what they cannot be masters of. Another country--it is imposs...ible they can be judges; and they ought not to aim at it--for they have different sensations, are used to different laws, manners and things, and consequently are habituated to different thoughts and ideas--'tis the same as if a cow was to write of a horse--or a horse of a cow--why they would proceed on quite different principles, and therefore certainly could be no judge of one another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The cultivated apple tree was first introduced into this country by the earliest settlers, and is thought to do as well or better ...here than anywhere else. Probably some of the varieties which are now cultivated were first introduced into Britain by the Romans. Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says, "Of trees there are some which are altogether wild (sylvestres), some more civilized (urbaniores)." Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed, it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds. It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like the dog and horse and cow: first, perchance, from Greece to Italy, thence to England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load.... For when man migrates, he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sward, but his orchard also.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a fog! Plane been buzzin' around overhead for the last half hour. Must be like trying to find your way through the inside of ...a cow. I never did see such a country. Even the birds are walkin'.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Crosby's fans talk about how "relaxed" he was, how "natural," how "casual and easygoing." By the time Presley began causing sensat...ions, the entire country had become relaxed, casual and easygoing, and its younger people seemed to be tired of it, for Elvis's act was anything but soothing and scarcely what a parent of that placid age would have called "natural" for a young man. Elvis was unseemly, loud, gaudy, sexual--that gyrating pelvis!--in short, disturbing. He not only disturbed parents who thought music was a soothing by Crosby, but also reminded their young that they were full of the turmoil of youth and an appetite for excitement. At a time when the country had a population coming of age with no memory of troubled times, Presley spoke to a yearning for disturbance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Chinese were born ... with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplan...ted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and... along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assemb...led, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the grea...t fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »