Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping t...he turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed--confound 'em!--is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up--so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers--as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; ...therefore my words have been rash. For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lord, crack their teeth! Lord, crush these lions' jaws! So let them sink as water in the sand;... When deadly bow their aiming fury draws, Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter's hand. So make them melt as the dishoused snailLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The ra...in fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-and great was its fall!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we,... Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity. Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; But, while we wait, allow our tears!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »