Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your g...irl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This sel...f-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world's affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. "I don't go to question the good Lord in his wisdom," runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, "but I jest cain't see why He put valleys in between the hills."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by... Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don't understand how you can live there. It's really, completely dead. Walk al...ong the street, there's nothing moving. I've lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were literally sunny all day long everyday of the week, but they weren't as boring as Los Angeles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From time immemorial the men of the town have been famous seamen, and have divided their energies between fishing and hating the E...nglish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of sel...f-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, you ...are obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your... desk in midair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »