MR. BLAKE,--I received your letter just as I was rushing to Fire Island beach to recover what remained of Margaret Fuller, and rea...d it on the way. That event and its train, as much as anything, have prevented my answering it before. It is wisest to speak when you are spoken to. I will now endeavor to reply, at the risk of having nothing to say. I find that actual events, notwithstanding the singular prominence which we all allow them, are far less real than the creations of my imagination. They are truly visionary and insignificant,--all that we commonly call life and death,--and affect me less than my dreams. This petty stream which from time to time swells and carries away the mills and bridges of our habitual life, and that mightier stream or ocean on which we securely float,--what makes the difference between them? I have in my pocket a button which I ripped off the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli, on the seashore, the other day. Held up, it intercepts the light,--an actual button,--and yet all the life that it is connected with is less substantial to me, and interests me less, than my faintest dream. Our thoughts are the epochs in our lives: all else is but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put to...gether and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper's Ferry engine-house,--that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sue Forbes: Old man routine getting you down? John Forbes: Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I get to feel like a wheel within a wh...eel within a wheel. Sue Forbes: You and fifty million others. John Forbes: I don't want to be like fifty million others. Sue Forbes: Oh, but you're John Forbes, average American, backbone of the country. John Forbes: I don't want to be an average American, backbone of the country. I want somebody else to be the backbone and hold me up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The cheering sound of "Dinner is upon the table," dissolved his reverie.... Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, and beh...aved to him with so much attention and politeness, that he gained upon him insensibly.... Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. "Pray give me leave, Sir:MIt is better here--A little of the brown--Some fat, Sir--A little of the stuffing--Some gravy--Let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter--Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange;Mor the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out;... The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no mans wit Can well direct him where to look for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the Kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House of Guise, and all of ...their confederates.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once, when lying in bed with no paper at hand, he began to sketch the idea for a new machine on the back of his wife's nightgown. ...He asked her if she knew the figure he was drawing. "Yes," she answered, "the figure of a fool."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »