We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life.... The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A revolution is not the overturning of a cart, a reshuffling in the cards of state. It is a process, a swelling, a new growth in t...he race. If it is real, not simply a trauma, it is another ring in the tree of history, layer upon layer of invisible tissue composing the evidence of a circle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State. This very spot was described as "covered with... the greatest abundance of pine," but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there,--and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The brave man is the elder son of creation who has stepped buoyantly into his inheritance, while the coward, who is the younger, w...aiteth patiently for his decease. He rides as wide of this earth's gravity as a star, and by yielding incessantly to all impulses of the soul is drawn upward and becomes a fixed star. His bravery consists not so much in resolute action as healthy and assured rest. Its palmy state is a staying at home, compelling alliance in all directions. So stands his life to heaven as some fair sunlit tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise is planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first rays of the dawn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.... In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but... a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.... The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree, That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after centur...y, Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The last public hanging in the State took place in 1835 on Prince Hill.... On the fatal day, the victim, a man named Watkins, peer...ing through the iron bars of his cell, and seeing the townfolk scurrying to the place of execution, is said to have remarked, 'Why is everyone running? Nothing can happen until I get there.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Religious fervor makes the devil a very real personage, and anything awe-inspiring or not easily understood is usually connected w...ith him. Perhaps this explains why, not only in the Ozarks but all over the State, his name crops up so frequently.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first general store opened on the 'Cold Saturday' of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store's promoter..., recorded in a letter: 'Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets'; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »