As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metap...hysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy an...d modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My old Father used to have a saying that "If you make a bad bargain, hug it the tighter"; and it occurs to me, that if the bargain... you have just closed [marriage] can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that maxim to, which my fancy can, by any effort, picture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I picked up a bottle half buried in the wet sand, covered with barnacles, but stoppled tight, and half full of red ale, which stil...l smacked of juniper,--all that remained I fancied from the wreck of a rowdy world,--that great salt sea on the one hand, and this little sea of ale on the other, preserving their separate characters. What if it could tell us its adventures over countless ocean waves! Man could not be man through such ordeals as it had passed. But as I poured it slowly out on to the sand, it seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances, but destined ere-long to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. I fathom...ed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am given up by traitors, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,... I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.
You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You want to know who killed Dietrichson? Hold tight to that cheap cigar of yours, Keyes. I killed Dietrichson. Me, Walter Neff. In...surance salesman. Thirty-five-years old. Unmarried. No visible scars. Till a while ago, that is. Yes, I killed him. Killed him for money, and for a woman. I didn't get the money, and, I didn't get the woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am no book larnt man, but there is few who can beat me swapping horses or guessing at the weight of a bar. I have come here beca...use my people voted for me, knowing I was a honest man and could make as good whiskey and apple brandy at my still as any man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who will join in the march to the Rocky Mountains with me, a sort of high-pressure-double-cylinder-go-it-ahead-forty-wildcats- tea...rin' sort of a feller?... Git out of this warming-pan, ye holly-hocks, and go out to the West where you may be seen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »