The old men of the village of Mahotière say that the Mistress of the Water is a mulatto woman. At midnight she comes out of the s...pring and sings while combing her dripping long hair, which makes a sound sweeter than a violin. It is a song of perdition for whomever hears it. There is no sign of the Cross, no "Our Father" to save him. Her curse takes him like a fish in a net and the Mistress of the Water awaits him on the edge of the spring and smiles upon him and tells him to follow her to the depths, from which he will never return.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
mourn ... The majesty and burning of the child's death. I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breathLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Almost everything we call "higher culture" is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my ...proposition. That "savage animal" has not really been "mortified"; it lives and flourishes, it has merely become--divine. What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty; what seems agreeable in so-called tragic pity, and at bottom in everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate shudders of metaphysics, receives its sweetness solely from the admixture of cruelty. What the Roman in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at an auto-da-fe or bullfight, the Japanese of today when he flocks to tragedies, the laborer in a Parisian suburb who feels a nostalgia for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who "submits to" Tristan and Isolde, her will suspended--what all of them enjoy and seek to drink in with mysterious ardor are the spicy potions of the great Circe, "cruelty."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You of the top hat, Mr. God,... you of the Cross made of lamb bones, you of the camps, sacking the rejoice out of Germany, I tell you this . . . it will not do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know of only one mystical poem that is satisfactorily successful, The Obscure Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross. In th...at amazing poem, what is said counts for almost nothing, but is sublimated into the purposed significance. The artist does not intend to go so far as that, but in seeking an incorruptible unity, he is always something of a mystic. Unlike the mystic, he clings to the world of things, though he transmutes it. He can never say the whole of what he means, but the mystic cannot say at all what he means; for his meaning is something singular and indivisible, something absolute in its inexpressibility. The simple lover in Cyrano can only say "I love you," but the poet Cyrano can say the same thing in a hundred elaborate ways.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country.... It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although its growth may seem to have been slow, it is to be remembered that it is not a shrub, or plant, to shoot up in the summer... and wither in the frosts. The Red Cross is a part of us--it has come to stay--and like the sturdy oak, its spreading branches shall yet encompass and shelter the relief of the nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines... Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improveme...nt; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »