Diddy-Wah-Diddy ... is a place of no work and no worry for man or beast. The road to it is so crooked that a mule pulling a load o...f fodder can eat off the back of the wagon as he plods along. All curbstones are chairs, and all food is already cooked. Baked chickens and sweet potato pies, with convenient knives and forks, drift along crying, 'Eat me! Eat me!'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before... The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store, Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay;... A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of bees in July Is not worth a fly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or ...writer or philosopher--a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As for the peasant populations of a great part of the world, they aren't so much anxious as hungry. They aren't anxious about whet...her they will get a salary raise, or which of the three colleges of their choice they will be admitted to, or whether to buy a Ford or Cadillac, or whether the kind of TV set they want is too expensive. They are hungry, cold and, in many parts of the world, they dread that local warfare, bandits, political coups may endanger their homes, their meager livelihoods and their lives. But surely they are not anxious. For anxiety, as we have come to use it to describe our characteristic state of mind, can be contrasted with the active fear of hunger, loss, violence and death. Anxiety is the appropriate emotion when the immediate personal terror--of a volcano, an arrow, the sorcerer's spell, a stab in the back and other calamities, all directed against one's self--disappears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gentlemen, I did not seek this command, but since it's been assigned me, I intend to make this regiment the best on the frontier. ...I fully realize that prolonged duty in a small outpost can lead to carelessness and inefficiency and laxity in dress and deportment. I call it to your attention that only one of you has reported here this morning properly dressed. The uniform, gentlemen, is not a subject for individual whimsical expression. We're not cowboys at this post or freighters with a load of alfalfa.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundre...d years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well wha...t he knows, not guessing but calculating; strong in community, yielding obedience to authority; of experienced race; of wonderful, wonderful common sense; dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a laboring man, despising game and sport; building a house that endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length forgets where he is buried and plows up his bones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give me the eye to see a navy in an acorn. What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What of the divine in a barber's shop ...or a privy? Much, all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you've ever been without money, or food, something very strange happens when you get a bit of money, a kind of madness. You don...'t care. You can't remember that you had no money before, that the money will be gone. You can remember nothing but that there is the money for which you have been suffering. Now here it is. A lust takes hold of you. You see food in the windows. In imagination you eat hugely; you taste a thousand meals. You look in windows. Colors are brighter; you buy something to dress up in. An excitement takes hold of you. You know it is suicide but you can't help it. You must have food, dainty, splendid food and a bright hat so once again you feel blithe, rid of that ratty gnawing shame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »