There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a herm...it crab or a snail.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, at intervals of three centuries were, in a political sense, the ...levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea finding its fulcrum in the interests of man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nineteenth-century novelist Thomas Love Peacock once remarked critically that "a poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a ci...vilized community.... The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward." It is my suspicion that though many moderns would applaud what Peacock probably meant only ironically, there is a certain virtue in the sidelong retreat of the crab. He never runs, he never ceases to face what menaces him, and he always keeps his pincers well to the fore. He is a creature adapted by nature for rearguard action and withdrawal, but never rout. The true poet is just such a fortunate creation as the elusive crab. He is born wary and is frequently in retreat because he is a protector of the human spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees... Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no waterLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life ...of thought and prayer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of youn...g people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts and grapes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the place of their self-content;... There are souls like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sor...t of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »