He remembered the dissolute adventures in which his senses, his nervous system and his mind had indulged; he saw himself corroded ...by irony and intellect, laid waste and paralyzed by insight, almost exhausted by the fevers and chills of creation, helplessly and contritely tossed to and fro between gross extremes, between saintly austerity and lust--oversophisticated and impoverished, worn out by cold, rare artificial ecstasies, lost, ravaged, racked and sick--and he sobbed with remorse and nostalgia.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply e...asily escape a sight so gross as ours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes does it make any difference whether Shake...speare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if A Midsummer Night's Dream was really a dream?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?... Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults, thy sweet self prove. For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body's treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love: flesh stays no farther reason, But rising at thy name doth point out thee As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call Her "love" for whose dear love I rise and fall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help ...put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;Msee if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all li...fe long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foolish fears of what might happen. I cast them all away... Among the clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay, Among the husking of the corn, Where drowsy poppies nod Where ill thoughts die and good are born-- Out in the fields with God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Dirty fellow!" exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, "hark you, Mrs. Frog, you'd best hold your tongue; for I must make... bold to tell you, if you don't, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. ...The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »