My friend let loose, and sneezed. The air carefully gathered itself together again, after being locally at odds with prevailing cl...imate and momentarily boycotting the trade winds. The germs were assimilated, like immigrant Jews within the overall commercial prosperity of uniform America. My friend, who had recoiled, was now well distributed in equal blocks of masses behind the reformed nose, whose recent adventure was put aside with even temper as but the sowing of wild oats. The nose, to compensate for its rash act, became a model of decorum, and was elevated as a moral precept: seen, but not heard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the few graces of getting old--and God knows there are few graces--is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the ...grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Jefferson Smith: I hate to stand here and try your patience like this, but either I'm dead right or I'm crazy. Senator MacPhe...rson: You wouldn't care to put that to a vote, would you, Senator?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the ...walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Channing you have seen and described is the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. Many a good ramble may you have together! You ...will see in him still more of the same kind to attract and to puzzle you. How to serve him most effectually has long been a problem with his friends. Perhaps it is left for you to solve it. I suspect that the most you or any one can do for him is to appreciate his genius,--to buy and read, and cause others to buy and read, his poems. That is the hand which he has put forth to the world,--take hold of that. Review them if you can,--perhaps take the risk of publishing something more which he may write. Your knowledge of Cowper will help you to know Channing. He will accept sympathy and aid, but he will not bear questioning, unless the aspects of the sky are particularly auspicious. He will ever be "reserved and enigmatic," and you must deal with him at arm's length.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his ...horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These pages reproduce me very imperfectly, and there are many things in me of which I find no trace in them. I suppose it is becau...se, in the first place, sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy; and, in the next, because I depend so much upon surrounding circumstances. When there is no call upon me, and nothing to put me to the test, I fall back into melancholy; and so the practical man, the cheerful man, the literary man, does not appear in these pages. The portrait is lacking in proportion and breadth; it is one-sided, and wants a center; it has, as it were, been painted from too near.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of ...men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility--the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »