Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city ... or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselve...s to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves--there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it?--are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help--can you face him honestly?).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am willing, for a money consideration, to test this physical strength, this nervous force, and muscular power with which I've be...en gifted, to show that they will bear a certain strain. If I break down, if my brain gives way under want of sleep, my heart ceases to respond to the calls made on my circulatory system, or the surcharged veins of my extremities burst--if, in short, I fall helpless, or it may be, dead on the track, then I lose my money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in r...anks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hail them, and fall off. Fall off! The drink is not yours, it is not yours! You do not come... from the same place, you do not suffer as the dead do, they do not suffer, they need, because they have drunk of the pot, they need.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have no conscience, none, but I would not like to bring a soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something li...ke a dead hand would fall on me,--"You did it, you, for your own pleasure you created this thing! See your work!" If it lived to be eighty it would always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God: if his work turns out bad so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands of it. Time and years can never bring the day when you can say to your child, "Soul, what have I to do with you?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear... As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then one will say, 'He is not dead, maybe, Who was mortality's unshaken lover... Who loved the spring upon the Tennessee, The hushed fall and, again, the coming clover.' None will recall, not knowing, the twisted roads Where the mind wanders till the heart corrodes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During those years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.... it was Shakespeare w...ho said, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." It was a state of mind with which I found myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn't matter to anyone any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »