While the onset of puberty can vary by as much as six years, every adolescent wants to be right on the 50-yard line, right in the ...middle of the field. One is always too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too hairy, too clear-skinned, too early, too late. Understandably, problems of self-image are rampant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But I, being man, can kiss And bed-spread-eagle too;... All flesh shall come to this, Being less than angel is, Yet higher far in bliss As it entwines with you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, ...that is, which causes suffering but not sickness. So the best way seems to be to scourge oneself with thin cords which hurt superficially, rather than to use some other means which might produce serious internal injury.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, "Know thyself," and too often leads to a self-estimate which wil...l subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love is sinister, is mean to us in separation;... makes our thin bodies thinner. This fellow Death lacks mercy and is good at counting our days. And Master, you, too, are subject to the plague of jealousy so think: how could womenfolk, soft as sprouts, live like this?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in 'f...oreign commerce' on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves--this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength--e...ach asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others di...e, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the grea...t fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writ...ing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »