... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly ...as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, .../>Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoo...ts two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It must be terrible to bury someone you love in early May, when the ground is beginning to thaw and stretch and turn bright green ...and the smell of lilacs tumbles down from the bushes like a little benediction. Or in September, when the noon sun is still warm on your face but the evenings are cool enough for flannel and an extra blanket dragged up from the footboard in the middle of the night. Or at Christmas. It must be terrible at Christmas. February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a pastoral game, baseball attempts to close the gap between the players and the crowd. It creates the illusion, for instance, t...hat with a lot a hard work, a little luck, and possibly some extra talent, the average spectator might well be playing; not watching. For most of us can do a few of the things that ball players can do: catch a pop-up, field a ground ball, and maybe get a hit once in a while.... As a heroic game, football is not concerned with a shared community of near-equals. It seeks almost the opposite relationship between its spectators and players, one which stresses the distance between them. We are not allowed to identify directly with Jim Brown any more than we are with Zeus, because to do so would undercut his stature as something more than human.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This hunter, who was a quite small, sunburnt man, having already carried his canoe over, and baked his loaf, had nothing so intere...sting and pressing to do as to observe our transit. He had been out a month or more alone. How much more wild and adventurous his life than that of the hunter in Concord woods, who gets back to his house and the mill-dam every night! Yet they in the towns who have wild oats to sow commonly sow them on cultivated and comparatively exhausted ground. And as for the rowdy world in the large cities, so little enterprise has it that it never adventures in this direction, but like vermin clubs together in alleys and drinking-saloons, its highest accomplishment, perchance, to run beside a fire-engine and throw brickbats. But the former is comparatively an independent and successful man, getting his living in the way that he likes, without disturbing his human neighbors. How much more respectable also is the life of the solitary pioneer or settler in these, or any woods,--having real difficulties, not of his own creation, drawing his subsistence directly from nature,--than that of the helpless multitudes in the towns who depend on gratifying the extremely artificial wants of society and are thrown out of employment by hard times!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban consp...iracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no healt...h to enjoy life. I suppose it's the discipline I need; but it's rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who a...re serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »