I can't accept "our nervous age," since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a st...urgeon or smelt; if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel whose name I had read in the morning through t...he telegraph glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull heaved up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot and most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow channel of the wide bay, till she was boarded by the health officer, and took her station at quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch the less adventurous newsman, who made his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine law, and, fastening his little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous news was being imparted by the captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, Africa, Europe--were all sunk; for which at length he pays the price, and is seen descending the ship's side with his bundle of newspapers,... to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, and we shall ere long read something startling,--"By the latest arrival,"M"by the good ship--M."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
leaving the page of the book carelessly open, something unsaid, the phone off the hook... and the love, whatever it was, an infection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then ...altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only difference between a man and woman climbing the ladder of success is that a woman is expected to put it in the closet whe...n she's finished with it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a... moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It could be clearly proved that by a practical nullification [by the South] of the Fifteenth Amendment the Republicans have for se...veral years been deprived of a majority in both the House and Senate. The failure of the South to faithfully observe the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the failure of all efforts towards complete pacification. It is on this hook that the bloody shirt now hangs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-...day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »