The universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye... level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I first took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on In...dependence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My travel's history, Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,... Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak--such was my process-- And of the cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast... polluted it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Miss Dudley ... gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid- ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is d...oing there. She sails gaily along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second-rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have the same curves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Western hospitality prevails; it is reminiscent of the kind displayed earlier here by a host who said to an unexpected guest, "Str...anger, you take the wold skin and the chaw o' sowbelly--I'll rough it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For ...what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »