I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to t...he woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think how stood the white pine tree on the shore of the Chesuncook, its branches soughing with the four winds, and every individua...l needle trembling in the sunlight,--think how it stands with it now,--sold, perchance, to the New England Friction-Match Company!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his penthouse lid;... He shall live a man forbid; Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Building up a family's fortune is like moving earth with a needle, but losing a family's fortune can be as swift as a boat rushing... downstream with the current.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The self-consciousness of Pine Ridge manifests itself at the village's edge in such signs as "Drive Keerful," "Don't Hit Our Young... 'uns," and "You-all Hurry Back"Mlocutions which nearly all Arkansas hill people use daily but would never dream of putting in print.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road;... Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How easily we could spell if we could follow, Like thread looped through the eye of a needle,... The grooves of light. It resists. But we stay behind, among them, The injured, the adored.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »