Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries: and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may ma...ke some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their se...nses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first day that we landed upon that fatal shore The planters they came round us full twenty score or more,... They rank'd us up like horses, and sold us out of hand Then yok'd us unto ploughs, my boys, to plow Van Dieman's Land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay... And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all li...fe long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foolish fears of what might happen. I cast them all away... Among the clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay, Among the husking of the corn, Where drowsy poppies nod Where ill thoughts die and good are born-- Out in the fields with God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Dirty fellow!" exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, "hark you, Mrs. Frog, you'd best hold your tongue; for I must make... bold to tell you, if you don't, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. ...The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »