If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt; you may shine, like the sun in the temperature zones, without scorching. Here ...it is wished for; under the Line it is dreaded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come un...der the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,... To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of human... actions.... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert.... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part ...of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,--flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,--while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind a...mong the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone, A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,... Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable, A glittering sword out of the east.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mutual repect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose l...ife we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over ...like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar's smile from the scorn of free men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »