Now we may have more preachers out there than we have drinkers. But a fellow told me a story one time about a man down in Kentucky... where they make bourbon. And he said you can take a jigger or two jiggers and get by all right. But if you try to take the whole bottle why you have lost what you started with. So don't try to take it too quick. And don't try to do all of it at once. I don't do much promising. I tell what my goals are and then I try to wrap it up and put a blue ribbon on it and get it delivered. We say put the coonskin on the wall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and lay down on a board against the side of the building, not having any blanket ...to cover me, with my head to the fire, that I might look after it, which is not the Indian rule. But as it grew colder towards midnight, I at length encased myself completely in boards, managing even to put a board on top of me, with a large stone on it, to keep it down, and so slept comfortably. I was reminded, it is true, of the Irish children, who inquired what their neighbors did who had no door to put over them in winter nights as they had; but I am convinced that there was nothing very strange in the inquiry. Those who have never tried it can have no idea how far a door, which keeps the single blanket down, may go toward making one comfortable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
'I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What's the matter? Why don't you put a stop to it?... 'I try, he said--That's all he could do, he looked tired. He's a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the g...reatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of the intrinsic differences that separate Americans from English the chief have their roots in the obvious disparity between the ...environment and traditions of the American people since the seventeenth century and those of the English. The latter have lived under a relatively stable social order, and it has impressed upon their souls their characteristic respect for what is customary and of good report. Until the First World War brought chaos to most of their institutions, their whole lives were regulated, perhaps more than those of any other people save the Spaniards, by regard for precedent. The Americans, though partly of the same blood, have felt no such restraint, and acquired no such habit of conformity. On the contrary, they have plunged to the other extreme, for the conditions of life in their country have put a high value upon the precisely opposite qualities of curiosity and daring, and so they have acquired that character of restlessness, that impatience of forms, that disdain of the dead hand, which now broadly marks them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their hea...ds together, and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science their labour bore fruit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In states of perplexity men will rub their chins with their hand, or tug at the lobes of their ears, or rub their foreheads or che...eks or back of the neck. Women have very different gestures in such states. They will either put a finger on their lower front teeth with the mouth slightly open or pose a finger under the chin. Other masculine gestures in states of perplexity are: rubbing one's nose, placing the flexed fingers over the mouth, rubbing the side of the neck, rubbing the infraorbital part of the face, rubbing the closed eyes, and picking the nose. These are all masculine gestures; so is rubbing the back of the hand or the front of the thigh, and pursing of the lips.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;... And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get th...e two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have put a padlock on you, Mother, dear dead human,... so that your great bells, those dear white ponies, can go galloping, galloping, wherever you are.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »