If you have ever watched an artist constructing with bits of cold stone a beautiful living picture you know that he works faithful...ly and carefully on the pattern from the wrong side and while he is working every inequality, every tint a little too dull is apparent to him as his picture grows, but he works on and on. And even when he finishes at last and looks down at the completed pattern he is not discouraged to see here a little crevice and there a little roughness, an open seam here, a tiny patch there where the bit of marble was too small. Now he pours his cement over it and smoothes [sic] it into every seam, and with faith puts his work to dry. Next day the pattern is turned and the perfect whole is given to view, needing only the polishing of a loving hand to make it ready to slip in place. So we should work faithfully on our pattern, cement it together with ourselves, and polish it with human kindness; and lo! the work slips into place seemingly a perfect whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling, dirt and d...eity--all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The service of philosophy, and of religion and culture as well, to the human spirit, is to startle it into a sharp and eager obser...vation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,--for that moment only.... How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses?... To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Failure is to form habits; for habit is relative to a stereotypical world; meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the conversation turned to the Princes of the House of France, "people with whom neither you nor I will be acquainted, and we d...o not want to, do we?", my grandmother would say to Swann, who perhaps had a letter from Twickenham in his pocket; she made him move to the piano and turn the pages on evenings when my grandmother's sisters sang; she had with this being, elsewhere so sought after, the naive roughness of a child who plays with a collector's item without any more care than with a less expensive one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras, Oregon.... That short-haired joy and roughness-- America--your stupidity. I could almost love you again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think ...I had sold my farm to buy my crown.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »