Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. The...y write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the f...act that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was interesting, when awakened at midnight, to watch the grotesque and fiend-like forms and motions of some one of the party, w...ho, not being able to sleep, had got up silently to arouse the fire.... Thus aroused, I, too, brought fresh fuel to the fire, and then rambled along the sandy shore in the moonlight, hoping to meet a moose come down to drink, or else a wolf. The little rill tinkled the louder, and peopled all the wilderness for me; and the glassy smoothness of the sleeping lake, laving the shores of a new world, with the dark, fantastic rocks rising here and there from its surface, made a scene not easily described. It has left such an impression of stern, yet gentle, wildness on my memory as will not be soon effaced.... When next we awoke, the moon and the stars were shining again, and there were signs of dawn in the east.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let a man get up and say, "Behold, this is the truth," and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the backgr...ound. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, th...is is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You use the phrase "brutal Rebels." Don't be cheated in that way. There are enough "brutal Rebels" no doubt, but we have brutal of...ficers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va.]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world was not created once and for all time for each of us individually. There are added to it in the course of our life thing...s of which we have never had any suspicion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world is not looking for servants,--there are plenty of these,--but for masters, men who form their purposes and then carry th...em out, let the consequences be what they may.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »