Every time an ashtray is missing from a hotel, they don't come looking for you. But let a diamond bracelet disappear in France and... they shout John Robie, the Cat. You don't have to spend every day of your life proving your honesty, but I do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let a human being throw the energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of h...is honesty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. Whe...n you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: "This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow." Be modest. An Englishman will say, "I have a little house in the country"; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, "Yes, I don't play too badly." If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, "I do a little sailing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look at the trees now, aren't they bare? But you let a certain day come for spring and they'll come out. They won't be the same le...aves that was there last year, but when they come out they're so pretty. I look out at those trees and just think, Oh, you're so beautiful. God sure dressed you up. I say that to a tree. The work I have done, if I have to do it over, I'm willin'. But I don't want to go back. Let me be the leaf just laying at the foot of the tree giving it substance to grow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, th...e world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been ...sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with a...nother cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »