Romance feeds on obstacles, short excitations, and partings; marriage, on the contrary, is made up of wont, daily propinquity, gro...wing accustomed to one another. Romance calls for "the faraway love" of the troubadours; marriage, for love of "one's neighbour." Where, then, a couple have married in obedience to a romance, it is natural that the first time a conflict of temperament or of taste becomes manifest the parties should ask themselves: "Why did I marry?" And it is no less natural that, obsessed by the universal propaganda in favour of romance, each should seize the first occasion to fall in love with somebody else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We continued along the most extensive larch wood which I had ever seen,--tall and slender trees with fantastic branches. But thoug...h this was the prevailing tree here, I do not remember that we saw any afterward. You do not find straggling trees of this species here and there throughout the wood, but rather a little forest of them. The same is the case with the white and red pines, and some other trees, greatly to the convenience of the lumberer. They are of a social habit, growing in "veins," "clumps," "groups," or "communities," as the explorers call them, distinguishing them far away, from the top of a hill or a tree, the white pines towering above the surrounding forest, or else they form extensive forests by themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here on this rugged and woody hillside has grown an apple tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural gr...owth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our care.... But the apple emulates man's independence and enterprise. It is not simply carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it has migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making its way amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse sometimes run wild and maintain themselves. Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat from the ha...nds of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O, Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of conscience!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect, Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,... As broad and general as the casing air. But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you ...one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At man's core there is a voice that wants him never to give in to fear. But if it is true that in general man cannot give in to fe...ar, at the very least he postpones indefinitely the moment when he will have to confront himself with the object of his fear ... when he will no longer have the assistance of reason as guaranteed by God, or when he will no longer have the assistance of God such as reason guaranteed. It is necessary to recoil, but it is necessary to leap, and perhaps one only recoils in order to leap better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond k...nowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"That's where I reckon Santa Claus comes in To be our parents' pseudonymity... In Christmas giving, so they can escape The thanks and let him catch it as a scapegoat...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »