The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the so...ldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill.... On every prominent ledge you could see England's hands holding the Canadas, and I judged from the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town,... and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting. Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... women can never do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of t...he Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely destitute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What shall we say who have knowledge Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act... To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave In the house? The ravenous grave?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsborough, now dead, whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the greatest f...reshets on this river took place in October, 1785, and its height was marked by a nail driven into an apple tree behind his house.... The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as interesting revelations, on this river's banks, as on the Euphrates or the Nile. This apple tree, which stands within a few rods of the river, is called "Elisha's apple tree," from a friendly Indian who was anciently in the service of Jonathan Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here by his own race in one of the Indian wars,--the particulars of which affair were told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no one knew exactly where, but in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water standing over the grave caused the earth to settle where it had once been disturbed, and when the flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the form and size of the grave, revealed its locality; but this was now lost again, and no future flood can detect it; yet, no doubt, nature will know how to point it out in due time, if it be necessary, by methods yet more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not only the crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and expand the body, marked by a fresh mound in the churchyard, but there is also a crisis when the body ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a fainter depression in the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle." No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says ...he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.--Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.--But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?--If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.--No one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I realize that if it goes through it will be greatest jewel of my administration.... It is strange how one happens on this sort of... thing. When I made that speech in New York advocating the arbitration of questions, even those affecting the honor of a nation, I had no definite policy in view. I was inclined, if I remember rightly, merely to offset the antagonism to the four battleships for which I was then fighting, and I threw out that suggestion merely to draw the sting of the old [Andrew] Carnegie and other peace cranks, and now the suggestion threatens to become the main fact of my four years as president.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man wil...l not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. Wh...en love ceases, then it is divulged.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »