The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched upla...nds; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,--from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,--heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festal board,--may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The female sex have long been the acknowledged possessors of a sort of mental quickness and intellectual acumen, or rather sharpne...ss of vision, which may be better understood by the term sprightliness of imagination, which has enabled them to discern, or at least to recognize those smaller springs of action that regulate the conduct of mankind, which, from their supposed insignificancy, have escaped the grosser sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although its growth may seem to have been slow, it is to be remembered that it is not a shrub, or plant, to shoot up in the summer... and wither in the frosts. The Red Cross is a part of us--it has come to stay--and like the sturdy oak, its spreading branches shall yet encompass and shelter the relief of the nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by soc...ial reality to appear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at r...est, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davi...es, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us,--he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, "Look, my Lord, it comes" ... Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, "Don't tell where I come from."M"From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expense of my country.... [W]ith that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression "come from Scotland," which I used in the sense of being of that country, and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help."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 »
People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the ol...der people and the kids? A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »