Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by... the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of, their labored homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating among the alders;Msuch healthy natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... often in the heat of noonday, leaning on a hoe, looking across valleys at the mountains, so blue, so close, my only conscious ...thought was, "How can I ever get away from here? How can I get to where they have books, where I can be educated?" I worked hard, always waiting for something to happen to change things. There came a time when I knew I must make them happen; that no one would do anything about it for me. And I did.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No other sun has lightened up my heaven, No other star has ever shone for me;... All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do... Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing--no, not for a king Upon whose property and most dear life A damned defeat was made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where ...you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets--no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character,--his immortal life; and so it becomes your... cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death. "Misguided!" "Garrulous!" "Insane!" "Vindictive!" So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »