To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful work...s of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning round.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves ...of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers rapidly vanish as civilization advances, but the most populous and civilized city cannot scare a shark far from its wharves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that... you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The night was thick and hazy When the "Piccadilly Daisy"... Carried down the crew and captain in the sea; And I think the water downed 'em; For they never, never found 'em, And I know they didn't come ashore with me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandston...e and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,--here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties ...silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever Epic may mean, it implies some weight and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not convey some notion of mystery a...nd fantasy. A general distinction of this kind, whatever names may be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval literature, to hold good of the two large groups of narrative belonging to the earlier and the later Middle Ages respectively. Beowulf might stand for the one side. Lancelot or Gawain for the other. It is a difference not confined to literature. The two groups are distinguished from one another, as the respectable piratical gentleman of the North Sea coast in the ninth or tenth century differs from one of the companions of Saint Louis. The latter has something fantastic in his ideas which the other has not. The Crusader may indeed be natural and brutal enough in most of his ways, but he has lost the sobriety and simplicity of the earlier type of rover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do--it's not so burningly important, after all, w...hat happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride... In her sepulchre there by the sea-- In her tomb by the side of the sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »