Life cannot be destroyed for good, neither ... can history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath t...he heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique ... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification o...f Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language is filled with words for deprivation... images so familiar it is hard to crack language open into that other country the country of being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: n...ot so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still the east end. A gr...eat field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,--olit, olit, olit,--chip, chip, chip, che char,--che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,--a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden is dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we think of him, he is without a hat, standing in the wind and weather. He was impatient of topcoats and hats, preferring to ...be exposed, and he was young enough and tough enough to enjoy the cold and the wind of those times.... It can be said of him, as of few men in a like position, that he did not fear the weather, and did not trim his sails, but instead challenged the wind itself, to improve its direction and to cause it to blow more softly and more kindly over the world and its people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is one of the worst speeches I've ever seen. No one will listen except the Mobil P.R. man. List what we want to say M arrange... items in order of priority M then say them plainly and bluntly.... Hit hard and early. Don't apologize or evade tough issues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nearby Bodie was a notoriously tough camp, where "a man for breakfast" was so frequent an occurrence that the phrase "bad man from... Bodie" was coined to describe those residents who were still in the land of the living. So impressive was its reputation for wickedness that once when an Aurora family considered moving to the town, the young daughter of the family finished her evening prayers with a tearful, "Goodbye, God, we're going to Bodie." Aurora ruffled whatever virtuous feathers it could muster and pointed scornfully. Bodie resentfully charged that the child has been deliberately misquoted--that what she had actually said was "Good! By God, we're going to Bodie"!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »