Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but... a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It appears that in a forest like this the great majority of flowers, shrubs, and grasses are confined to the banks of the rivers a...nd lakes, and to the meadows, more open swamps, burnt lands, and mountain-tops; comparatively very few indeed penetrate the woods. There is no such dispersion even of wild-flowers as is commonly supposed, or as exists in a cleared and settled country. Most of our wild-flowers, so called, may be considered as naturalized in the localities where they grow. Rivers and lakes are the great protectors of such plants against the aggressions of the forest, by their annual rise and fall keeping open a narrow strip where these more delicate plants have light and space in which to grow. They are the protégés of the rivers. These narrow and straggling bands and isolated groups are, in a sense, the pioneers of civilization. Birds, quadrupeds, insects, and man also, in the main, follow the flowers, and the latter in his turn makes more room for them and for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds. One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries but mountain maples came in, in the clearing and burning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimon...y to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And born hym weel, as of so litel space, In hope to stonden in his lady grace.... Embrouded was he, as it were a meede Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede. Syngynge he was or floytynge al the day. He was as fressh as in the monthe of May.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The merit of those who fill a space in the world's history, who are borne forward, as it were, by the weight of thousands whom the...y lead, shed a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private virtue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's interesting--the way in which one has to balance life--because you have to know when to let go and when to pull back.... Ther...e's always some liminal (as opposed to subliminal) space in between which is harder to inhabit because it never feels as safe as moving from one extreme to another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a brief time for sex, and a long time when sex is out of place. But when it is out of place as an activity there still sh...ould be the large and quiet space in the consciousness where it lives quiescent. Old people can have a lovely quiescent sort of sex, like apples, leaving the young quite free for their sort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none over for works o...f imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. I asked for bread and was given a tranquilliser. It is important to recognise that in our time man has not written one word, thought one thought, put two notes or two bricks together, splashed colour on to canvas or concrete into space, in a manner which will be of any conceivable imaginative interest to posterity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body i...s in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an effect arising from the first existence of being, because when any being is postulated, space is postulated.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the brain of man is the speck of dust in the universe that thinks, so the leaves--the fern and the needled pine and the lattice...d frond and the seaweed ribbon--perceive the light in a fundamental and constructive sense. The flowers looking in from the walled garden through my window do not, it is true, see me. But their leaves see the light, as my eyes can never do. They take it, as it forever spills away radiant into space in a golden waste, to a primal purpose. They impound its stellar energy, and with that force they make life out of the elements. They breathe upon the dust, and it is a rose. Say that this is done with neither thought nor passion, and by something other than will. True that a plant may not think; neither will the profoundest of men ever put forth a flower. Of the use and the beauty of flowering there can be no shade of doubt. It is a rare thought of which as much can be said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »