The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and s...aid unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves f...rom the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to th...is effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hereabouts our Indian told us at length the story of their contention with the priest respecting schools. He thought a great deal ...of education and had recommended it to his tribe. His argument in its favor was, that if you had been to college and learnt to calculate, you could "keep 'um property,--no other way." He said that his boy was the best scholar in the school at Oldtown, to which he went with whites. He himself is a Protestant, and goes to church regularly at Oldtown. According to his account, a good many of his tribe are Protestants, and many of the Catholics also are in favor of schools. Some years ago they had a schoolmaster, a Protestant, whom they liked very well. The priest came and said that they must send him away, and finally he had such influence, telling them that they would go to the bad place at last if they retained him, that they sent him away. The school party, though numerous, were about giving up. Bishop Fenwick came from Boston and used his influence against them. But our Indian told his side that they must not give up, must hold on, they were the strongest. If they gave up, then they would have no party. But they answered that it was "no use, priest too strong, we'd better give up." At length he persuaded them to make a stand. The priest was going for a sign to cut down the liberty-pole. So Polis and his party had a secret meeting about it; he got ready fifteen or twenty stout young men, "stript 'um naked, and painted 'um like old times," and told them that when the priest and his party went to cut down the liberty-pole, they were to rush up, take hold of it, and prevent them, and he assured them that there would be no war, only noise,--"no war where priest is." He kept his men concealed in a house near by, and when the priest's party were about to cut down the liberty-pole, the fall of which would have been a death-blow to the school party, he gave a signal, and his young men rushed out and seized the pole. There was a great uproar, and they were about coming to blows, but the priest interfered, saying, "No war, no war," and so the pole stands, and the school goes on still. We thought that it showed a good deal of tact in him, to seize the occasion and take his stand on it; proving how well he understood those with whom he had to deal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or ...another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall--which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that ca...n at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The line it is drawn The curse it is cast... The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptac...le in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them, a past o...f indefinite complexity and marvel, an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating, which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And ... whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask oneself: "Well, who are the best people to live with?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »