Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common silence on every side. The parti...es are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on these walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, yo...u were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value it...self by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do not fear to put thy feet Naked in the river sweet;... Think not leech, or newt, or toad Will bite thy foot when thou hast trod; Nor let the water, rising high, As thou wadest, make thee cry, And sob; but ever live with me, And not a wave shall trouble thee.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,... dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is futile to ask women not to go into business, as futile almost as to insist that water shall not run downhill. One cannot sto...p world movements; and the efforts of women toward emancipation--the natural result of the deadly monotony of their task on the one hand, a jealousy of man's freedom, and a total ignorance of man's struggle as well as of the glory of their own special opportunity--all lead to the condition we are facing to-day. If in any way I can indicate the pain of the struggle, if I can succeed in making women appreciate that there are two sides to the question, one not altogether rosy, and that, although they will undoubtedly win, they will be forced to pay a high price, then I shall have accomplished my purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot remember things I once read A few friends, but they are in cities.... Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup Looking down for miles Through high still air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the... puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews [sic] the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cult...ivated a large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun ranging with the line, and where, he informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped high over the line, and sympathized with our host's on the whole quite human, if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That night especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant political organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in his melons, and continued to plant. We suggested melon seeds of new varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable influence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grew as well in one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his hillside,--when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls whom we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »