I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Som...e word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to... the level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does not with Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot,--and Webster, its maker, with it, like the dirt-bug and its ball.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he go...t so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These n...ever presented a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to se...e them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful--our own innocence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted... with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor--a generosity of which the rich and the well-to-do have, for the most part, not the faintest conception. Go into the modest homes, into the out-of-the-way corners, into the open country. Go where you can find something fresh to bring back to the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's sel...f in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society."... This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "in formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life's an awfully lonesome affair.... You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are m...ore alone while living than even going and coming.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of t...he picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it. I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Southern States are uneasy at the prospect of [Abraham] Lincoln's election today. The ultra South threatens disunion, and it n...ow looks as if South Carolina and possibly two or three others would go out of the Union. Will they? And if so, what is to be the result? Will other slave States gradually be drawn after them, or will the conservative States draw back into the Union or hold in the Union the ultra States? I think the latter. But at all events, I feel as if the time had come to test this question. If the threats are meant, then it is time the Union was dissolved or the traitors crushed out. I hope Lincoln goes in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »