The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and man...y miles long, as if the surface were covered with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond.... Yet this same placid ocean, as civil now as a city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, will ere long be lashed into sudden fury, and all its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will play with them like seaweed, distend them like dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. This gentle ocean will toss and tear the rag of a man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard-of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor has recently been buried amid the sand-hills.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here far from the city we make our roadside stand And ask for some city money to feel in hand... To try if it will not make our being expand, And give us the life of the moving-pictures' promise That the party in power is said to be keeping from us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so... help me God. Amen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A fact is like a sack--it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feeli...ngs that caused it in the first place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In one way an oil boom is a mighty bad thing, because it gets into your blood and almost becomes an obsession. Booms are filled wi...th excitement, adventure, and drama, but sometimes the exit from the scene must be made between suns on a pair of mighty weary feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Eat what you can get. Where's the salt... in this dump of a village? And, Lucky Man, what's the use of a salty thing if there's no oil in it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »