This habit of free speaking at ladies' lunches has impaired society; it has doubtless led to many of the tragedies of divorce and ...marital unhappiness. Could society be deaf and dumb and Congress abolished for a season, what a happy and peaceful life one could lead!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudimen...ts of what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. Every generation makes the discovery that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty misapplied and debauched. The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such groveling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?... But where is the instructed teacher? Where are the normal schools?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say,... Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the de...af, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blackberries Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes... Ebon in the hedges, fat With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers. I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know the thing that's most uncommon (Envy be silent and attend!);... I know a reasonable woman, Handsome and witty, yet a friend.
Not warped by passion, awed by rumour, Not grave through pride, or gay through folly; An equal mixture of good humour And sensible soft melancholy.
'Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir?' Yes, she has one, I must aver: When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf, and does not hear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb; Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!... She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come! Maryland, my Maryland!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »