"Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and... along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, the fields on either hand had a soft and cultivated English aspect, the village ...spire being seen over the copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard straggled down to the water-side, though, generally, our course this forenoon was the wildest part of our voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly cultivators of the earth, and lived under an organized political government. The schoolhouse stood with a meek aspect, entreating a long truce to war and savage life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the frontiers of civilization.... It is but a few years since Bouchette decla...red that the country ten leagues north of the British capital of North America was as little known as the middle of Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical associations, were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and from Nature, as if the beholder had read her history,--an influence which, like the Great River itself, flowed from the Arctic fastnesses and Western forests with irresistible tide over all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,--who ...had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now I'm going to tell you about a scorpion. This scorpion wanted to cross a river, so he asked a frog to carry him. "No," said the... frog, "no thank you. If I let you on my back you may sting me, and the sting of the scorpion is death." "Now where," asked the scorpion, "is the logic of that?"Mfor scorpions would try to be logical. "If I sting you, you will die, I will drown." So the frog was convinced to allow the scorpion on his back. But, just in the middle of the river, he felt a terrible pain and realized that, after all, the scorpion had stung him. "Logic!" cried the dying frog as he started under, taking the scorpion down with him. "There is no logic in this!" "I know," said the scorpion, "but I can't help it. It's my character."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has bee...n spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God--an anguished cry for peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Turn 'em loose.... Wherever they go, they'll be on my land. My land. We're here and we're gonna stay here. Gimme ten years and I'l...l have that brand on the gates of the greatest ranch in Texas. The big house'll be down by the river, the corrals and the barns behind it. It'll be a good place to live in. Ten years and I'll have the Red River "D" on more cattle than you've looked at anywhere. I'll have that brand on enough beef to feed the whole country. Good beef for hungry people. Beef to make 'em strong, to make 'em grow. But it takes work, it takes sweat, and it takes time, lots of time. It takes years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ol' man river, dat ol' man river, He must know sumpin', but don't say nothin'... He just keeps rollin', He keeps on rollin' along.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »