With ruin staring you in the face, there is nothing worse to live through than a siege of waiting and hoping. If you manage to liv...e through it, nothing can ever jar your nerves after that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,... Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most modern fortifications have an air of antiquity about them; they have the aspect of ruins in better or worse repair from t...he day they are built, because they are not really works of this age. The very place where the soldier resides has a peculiar tendency to become old and dilapidated, as the word barrack implies. I couple all fortifications in my mind with the dismantled Spanish forts to be found in so many parts of the world; and if in any place they are not actually dismantled, it is because that there the intellect of the inhabitants is dismantled.... Such structures carry us back to the Middle Ages, the siege of Jerusalem, and St. Jean d'Acre, and the days of the Bucaniers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel... Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes Bane, and in heav'n much worse would be my state.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power,... How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays? O fearful meditation, where alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has be...come Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made ...in a test tube.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »