Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young ...couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror.... Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still the east end. A gr...eat field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,--olit, olit, olit,--chip, chip, chip, che char,--che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,--a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden is dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written. ..."I have no name: "I am but two days old." What shall I call thee? "I happy am, "Joy is my name." Sweet joy befall thee!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You can make lots of mistakes, but if you give children avenues for creativity and joy, they will have resources to carry them thr...ough. For example, if cooking together, reading, listening to music, coloring, participating in sports, or taking a walk in the woods are paired with pleasure and closeness, throughout life doing these things will kindle old feelings of happiness an/or comfort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water..., made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the rusty Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear... Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands And gulp from them the dailiness of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »