I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn... what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Them old masters, when they got mad, had no mercy on a nigger--they'd cut a nigger all up in a hurry--cut 'em all up into strings,... just leave the life, that's all. I've seen 'em do it, many a time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here lies a man who was killed by lightning; He died when his prospects seemed to be brightening.... He might have cut a flash in this world of trouble, But the flash cut him, and he lies in the stubble.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue,... I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertnes...s for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people's motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hannah Hunter: Medicine is the most noble and unselfish-- Col. John Marlowe: Sure, noble profession, noble oath, lanterns hel...d on high--so high they won't admit they're gropin' for.... There was a girl, not much older than that boy in there. I wasn't unfair then, understand. Because they used a lot of fancy words that an ordinary section hand wouldn't understand. So I held her down, while two of them worked on her. I trusted doctors then, believed in 'em, because I was in love, and I didn't want to see her die. A tumor they said it was, and it had to come out right away. So they stuck a leather strap in her mouth so she could bite off her screams, while they cut a way to get in there. And what did they find--nothing! Oh, they were sorry. Sure. They made a mistake. They had something they could talk about before their next little experiment. But what about me. They left me beggin' her not to die. And I lost my wife.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emperor Joseph II: Your work is ingenious. It's quality work, and there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and ...it will be perfect. Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, majesty?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Determination and skill come out of a depth of political and cultural experiences. Women resist and are brave in the most ordinary...-seeming situations: on a welfare line, after being told that medical benefits are going to cut; on a street late at night helping a sister who is being harassed; as a mother demanding that the hospital stop experimenting with sterilization on her daughters; one sister to another trying to convince her to stop shooting up because it's giving the man a victory, swallowing up her life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »