One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human ...tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had got away. That was my victory. The real quarrel with Ireland began to burgeon in me then; I thought of how it had warped me,... and those around me, and their parents before them, all stooped by a variety of fears--fear of church, fear of gombeenism, fear of phantoms, fear of ridicule, fear of hunger, fear of annihilation, and fear of their own deeply ingrained agression [sic] that can only strike a blow at each other, not having the innate authority to strike at those who are higher. Pity arose too, pity for a land so often denuded, pity for a people reluctant to admit that there is anything wrong. That is why we leave. Because we beg to differ. Because we dread the psychological choke. But leaving is only conditional. The person you are is anathema to the person you would like to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which ...so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both envy and jealousy are common experiences. They are entirely different feelings, one a desire for what another person has, the... other fear that the other person will take what we have, but they both have a corrosive effect on the heart. Either emotion can make a person feel ugly. There is nothing noble in either of them. At the same time, a person may feel oddly attached to them. The jealous person takes some pleasure in his suspicions, and the envious person feeds on his desire for what others possess.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This afternoon's experience suggested to me how base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness. The e...xplorers and lumberers generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day for their labor, and as such they have no more love for wild nature than wood-sawyers have for forests. Other white men and Indians who come here are for the most part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose and other wild animals as possible. But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neithe...r can nor should be forgiven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, afte...r all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line--now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner in pork, that's all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For this world we live in None of us is sly enough.... Never do we notice All is lie and bluff. Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not Always spoken the truth in my books? And now You treat me like a liar! I order you: Burn me! Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary men. Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »