Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the par...ent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets--the little thri...lling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty--surely they are due to Steam?" "And when we travel by electricity--if I may venture to develop your theory--we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Philosophers multiply our general nouns and verbs; they give fresh sense to stale terms; "man" and "nature" are their characters; ...while novelists toil at filling in the blanks in proper names and at creating other singular affairs. A novelist may pin a rose to its stem as you might paper a tail to its donkey, the rose may blush at his command, but the philosopher can elevate that reddening from an act of simple verbal predication to an angel-like ingression, ennobling it among Beings. The soul, we must remember is the philosopher's invention, as thrilling a creation as, for instance, Madame Bovary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The meeting in the open of two dogs, strangers to each other, is one of the most painful, thrilling, and pregnant of all conceivab...ale encounters; it is surrounded by an atmosphere of the last canniness, presided over by a constraint for which I have no preciser name; they simply cannot pass each other, their mutual embarrassment is frightful to behold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The command of comparisons that develops with age is, while no doubt good for the mind, somewhat numbing for the emotions. It is a... wonderful thing to be able to look at an Italian cathedral and recognize the classical influences upon its Gothic, but it is still more wonderful to look at it altogether unaware, altogether open to its fascination. Literature is more thrilling before critical relativity arises; the worst of wine, in the early years of one's life, is better than the best toward the end; and as to your first love, earnestly though you may deny it to later partners and even to yourself, nothing will ever match its ecstasy, laced as it is likely to have been with reckless innocence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm--that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice... cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some sepulcher, remote, alone, Against whose portal she hath thrown,... In childhood, many an idle stone-- Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne'er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin! It was the dead who groaned within.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;... This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling--'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathèd worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would o...nly be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »