We went to Ranelagh. It is a charming place; and the brilliancy of the lights, on my first entrance, made me almost think I was in... some enchanted castle or fairy palace, for all looked like magic to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there is anything so romantic as that castle-palace-fortress of Monaco I have not seen it. If there is anything more delicious ...than the lovely terraces and villas of Monte Carlo I do not wish to see them. There is nothing beyond the semi-tropical vegetation, the projecting promontories into the Mediterranean, the all-embracing sweep of the ocean, the olive groves, and the enchanting climate! One gets tired of the word beautiful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by t...he church and the Sabbath-school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It is hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor.... It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians. In fact, I love this book rarely, though it is a sort of castle in the air to me, which I am permitted to dream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Separating ourselves from the crowd, we walked up a narrow street, thence ascended by some wooden steps, called the Break-neck Sta...irs, into another steep, narrow, and zigzag street, blasted through the rock, which last led through a low, massive stone portal, called Prescott Gate, the principal thoroughfare into the Upper Town. This passage was defended by cannon, with a guard-house over it, a sentinel at his post, and other soldiers at hand ready to relieve him. I rubbed my eyes to be sure that I was in the Nineteenth Century, and was not entering one of those portals which sometimes adorn the frontispieces of new editions of old black-letter volumes. I thought it would be a good place to read Froissart's Chronicles. It was such a reminiscence of the Middle Ages as Scott's novels. Men apparently dwelt there for security! Peace be unto them! As if the inhabitants of New York were to go over to Castle William to live! What a place it must be to bring up children!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thru all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.... It sounds and echoes in my soul; How can I keep from singing?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink:... Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by, Or any other reason why.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in t...he machinery of civilised life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His pain was too great. He begged me for the simple mercy of death. And I could do nothing else but help him leave a world that ha...d become a sleepless, tortured nightmare to him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »