It is easier to discover another such a new world as Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so w...ell; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature. But there is only necessary a moment's sanity and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have only some vague preemption right and western reserve as yet. We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, and sunset skies are all that we know of it.... Let us not, my friends, be wheedled and cheated into good behavior to earn the salt of our eternal porridge, whoever they are that attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not purchase any clearing here, trusting that richer bottoms will soon be put up. It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where... we had first pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary vales uninhabited by man. Two herons (Ardea herodias), with their long and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen traveling high over our heads,--their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth's surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the ages to study.... The last vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of her dimly lighted halls; "Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles," and the valleys echoed the sound of the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There a...re only individual egos, crazy for love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Determination and skill come out of a depth of political and cultural experiences. Women resist and are brave in the most ordinary...-seeming situations: on a welfare line, after being told that medical benefits are going to cut; on a street late at night helping a sister who is being harassed; as a mother demanding that the hospital stop experimenting with sterilization on her daughters; one sister to another trying to convince her to stop shooting up because it's giving the man a victory, swallowing up her life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the natures of the times deceased,... The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;... from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All children's books are about ideals. Adult fiction sets out to portray and then explain the world as it really is; books for chi...ldren present it as it should be. Child readers come to them hoping for a certain amount of instruction, but chiefly for stories in which the petty restrictions of ordinary life are removed: they want to encounter people who can fly, geese that lay golden eggs, frogs that turn into princes, spaceships piloted by children, anything that measures up to their ideals of adventure and imagination. Adults, on the other hand, are more likely to want to feed the children a set of moral examples. By all means, let them have their fun, but the opportunity of providing models of ideal behaviour is not to be wasted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »