Once also it was my business to go in search of the relics of a human body, mangled by sharks, which had just been cast up, a week... after a wreck, having got the direction from a lighthouse: I should find it a mile or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods from the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick stuck up. I expected that I must look very narrowly to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, half a mile wide, and stretching farther than the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so magnifying, that when I was half a mile distant the insignificant sliver which marked the spot looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were conspicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy plain, or a generation had labored to pile up their cairn there. Close at hand they were simply some bones with a little flesh adhering to them, in fact only a slight inequality in the sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all remarkable about them, and they were singularly inoffensive both to the senses and the imagination. But as I stood there they grew more and more imposing. They were alone with the beach and the sea, whose hollow roar seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed as if there was an understanding between them and the ocean which necessarily left me out, with my snivelling sympathies. That dead body had taken possession of the shore, and reigned over it as no living one could, in the name of a certain majesty which belonged to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the ...painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had most need of blessing, and "Amen" Stuck in my throat.... The point is that you can't be too greedy. Certes, they been lyk to houndes, for an hound whan he comth by the roser, or by other bushes, though he may nat pisse, yet wole he heve up his leg and make a contenaunce to pisse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suddenly he found he had pressed the spring of the grenade. He struggled to pull it out of his pocket. It stuck in the narrow pock...et. His arm and his cold fingers that clutched the grenade seemed paralyzed. Then a warm joy went through him. He had thrown it. Anderson was standing up, swaying backwards and forwards. The explosion made the woods quake.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on... the cuckoo clock style of architecture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, b...it by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; Treason is but trusted like the fox,... Who never so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half of a tart country apple pie wh...ich we had purchased to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish, and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. The river here opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, which we bounded merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys turned their cheeks to it.... Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the watery trench; gracefully plowing homeward with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her wings, throwing the spray about her before she can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist--nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writin...g away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Murder's never perfect. Always comes apart sooner or later. And when two people are involved, it's usually sooner.... Sometime, so...mewhere, they've got to meet. Their emotions are all kicked up. Whether it's love or hate doesn't matter. They can't keep away from each other. They may think it's twice as safe because there are two of them. But it isn't twice as safe. It's ten times twice as dangerous. They've committed a murder! And it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip, and the last stop is the cemetery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »