I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and lis...tened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an ani...mal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husband...ry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You seem to think that I am adapted to nothing but the sugar-plums of intellect and had better not try to digest anything stronger....... a writer of popular sketches in magazines; a lecturer before Lyceums and College societies; a dabbler in metaphysics, poetry, and art, than which I would rather die, for if it has come to that, alas! verily, as you say, mediocrity has fallen on the name of Adams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their f...ox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck.... We pain ourselves to please nobody.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you still behave in dancing rooms and other societies as I have seen you--I do not want to live--if you have done so I wish thi...s coming night may be my last. I cannot live without you, and not only you but chaste you; virtuous you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves,... Where other groves and other streams along With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves And hears the unexpressive nuptial song In the bless'd kingdoms meek of joy and love. There entertain him all the saints above In solemn troops and sweet societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranqu...il lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »