The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company ...was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man,... a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if there were as many more their equals in these respects in all the country.... These alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung. That was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them. They were ripe for the gallows. She has tried a long time, she has hung a good many, but never found the right one before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half of a tart country apple pie wh...ich we had purchased to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish, and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. The river here opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, which we bounded merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys turned their cheeks to it.... Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the watery trench; gracefully plowing homeward with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her wings, throwing the spray about her before she can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the p...oor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed a...nd would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When John Henry was a little fellow, You could hold him in the palm of your hand,... He said to his pa, "When I grow up I'm gonna be a steel-driving man. Gonna be a steel-driving man."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above;... White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do you know, I've never really grown up? It's a hard thing for me to play this game. In politics, one must meet people, and that's... not easy for me.... When I was a little fellow, as long ago as I can remember, I would go into a panic if I heard stranger voices in the house. I felt I just couldn't meet the people and shake hands with them. Most of the visitors would sit with Mother and Father in the kitchen and the hardest thing in the world was to go through the door and give them a greeting.... I'm all right with old friends, but every time I meet a stranger, I've got to go through the old kitchen door, back home, and it's not easy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Van Gogh was right in saying that the method he had chosen could be compared to that of caricature. Caricature had always been "ex...pressionist," for the caricaturist plays with the likeness of his victim, and distorts it to express just what he feels about his fellow man. As long as these distortions of nature sailed under the flag of humour nobody seemed to find them difficult to understand. Humourous art was a field in which everything was permitted, because people did not approach it with the prejudices they reserved for Art with a capital A. But the idea of a serious caricature, of an art which deliberately changed the appearance of things not to express a sense of superiority, but maybe love, or admiration, or fear, proved indeed a stumbling block as Van Gogh had predicted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I duly acknowledge that I have gone through a long life, with fewer circumstances of affliction than are the lot of most men. Unin...terrupted health, a competence for every reasonable want, usefulness to my fellow-citizens, a good portion of their esteem, no complaint against the world which has sufficiently honored me, and above all, a family which has blessed me by their affections, and never by their conduct given me a moment's pain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said ...of them, "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »