The flattering, if arbitrary, label, First Lady of the Theatre, takes its toll. The demands are great, not only in energy but even...tually in dramatic focus. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a star to occupy an inch of space without bursting seams, cramping everyone else's style and unbalancing a play. No matter how self-effacing a famous player may be, he makes an entrance as a casual neighbor and the audience interest shifts to the house next door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first month of his absence I was numb and sick... And where he'd left his promise Life did not turn or kick. The seed, the seed of love was sick.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
MR. BLAKE,--I received your letter just as I was rushing to Fire Island beach to recover what remained of Margaret Fuller, and rea...d it on the way. That event and its train, as much as anything, have prevented my answering it before. It is wisest to speak when you are spoken to. I will now endeavor to reply, at the risk of having nothing to say. I find that actual events, notwithstanding the singular prominence which we all allow them, are far less real than the creations of my imagination. They are truly visionary and insignificant,--all that we commonly call life and death,--and affect me less than my dreams. This petty stream which from time to time swells and carries away the mills and bridges of our habitual life, and that mightier stream or ocean on which we securely float,--what makes the difference between them? I have in my pocket a button which I ripped off the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli, on the seashore, the other day. Held up, it intercepts the light,--an actual button,--and yet all the life that it is connected with is less substantial to me, and interests me less, than my faintest dream. Our thoughts are the epochs in our lives: all else is but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free. Such things did ...not need as much emphasis a generation ago, but when the clock of civilization can be turned back by burning libraries, by exiling scientists, artists, musicians, writers and teachers; by disbursing universities, and by censoring news and literature and art; an added burden, an added burden is placed on those countries where the courts of free thought and free learning still burn bright. If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... today we round out the first century of a professed republic,--with woman figuratively representing freedom--and yet all free,... save woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good ...government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of th...e Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not they back to the compass; accept... the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay ...aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The free man is a warrior.--How is freedom measured among individuals, among peoples? According to the resistance that must be ove...rcome, according to the trouble it takes to stay on top. The highest type of free man must be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps away from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »