We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one ...is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the... way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art--Everything is self- evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art--nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,... Write in a book the morning's prime, Or match with words the tender sky?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the ...sunset over the box house hills and cry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Borrow a child and get on welfare. Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,... or go to the public park with the child, and take the child to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don't talk back ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry... "There!" and it is gone forever. Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and are confounded by them by the inexperienced; but this only because they are near. It is not long before they must yield their place; nay, the light they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their influence is confined to their orbit--their contemporaries. Their path is one of change and movement, and with the circuit of a few years their tale is told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; their position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a light of their own; their effect today is the same as it was yesterday, because, having no parallax, their appearance does not alter with a difference in our standpoint. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a corner and cry "Heigh-ho for a ...husband!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren--and so it is; and so is all the world to him who wi...ll not cultivate the fruits it offers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if... we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »