What one really wants is youth, and what one really loses is years. Life becomes at last a mere piece of acting. One goes on by ha...bit, playing more or less clumsily that one is still alive. It is ludicrous and at times humiliating, but there is a certain style in it which youth has not. We become all, more or less, gentlemen; we are ancien régime; we learn to smile while gout racks us.... We get out of bed in the morning all broken up, without nerves, color or temper, and by noon we are joking with young women about the play. One lives in constant company with diseased hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs; one shakes hands with certain death at closer embrace every day; one sees paralysis in every feature and feels it in every muscle; all one's functions relax their action day by day; and, what is worse, one's grasp on the interests of life relaxes with the physical relaxation; and, through it all, we improve; our manners acquire refinement; our sympathies grow wider; our youthful self-consciousness disappears; very ordinary men and women are found to have charm; our appreciations have weight; we should almost get to respect ourselves if we knew of anything human to respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Boys forget what their country means by just reading "the land of the free" in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget... even more. Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men always sell strawberries, women, blackberries, your all- knowing Creole friend says. 'Why?' you ask. 'Ah, it has always been t...hat way.' When you get to know Creoles better, you realize that the phrase 'It has always been that way' justifies everything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of being... created so as to understand them to some degree.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 »
Other people--grandparents, sisters and brothers, the mother's best friend, the next-door neighbor--get to be familiar to the baby.... If the mother communicates her trust in these people, the baby will regard them as delicious novelties. Anybody the mother trusts whom the baby sees often enough partakes a bit of the presence of the mother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Roger Thornhill: Tell me, how does a girl like you get to be a girl like you? Eve Kendall: Lucky I guess.... Roger Thornhill: No, not lucky. Naughty, wicked, up to no good. Ever kill anyone? Because I bet you could tease a man to death without half trying. So stop trying.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looks like we got a trial ahead of us. But it's not the first time. We've had to go it alone before, and we'll have to go it alone... again. We're tough. We've had to be tough ever since Brother Brigham led our people across the plain. Well, they survived and I dang it, we'll, well, we'll survive too. Now put out your fires and get to your wagons.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »