1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has... turned out to be an Annus Horribilis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...the hard work and poverty of my childhood ... turned out to be my greatest asset in later years. Nothing could ever seem too ha...rd after that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn ...how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946.... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a g...irl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God; though, referred to herself, she is genius; and there is a similarity be...tween her operations and man's art even in the details and trifles. When the overhanging pine drops into the water, by the sun and water, and the wind rubbing it against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned in a lathe. Man's art has wisely imitated those forms into which all matter is most inclined to run, as foliage and fruit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We now discovered that we were in a foreign country, in a station-house of another nation.... My attention was caught by the doubl...e advertisements in French and English, fastened to its posts, by the formality of the English, and the covert or open reference to their queen and the British lion. No gentlemanly conductor appeared, none whom you would know to be the conductor by his dress and demeanor; but ere long we began to see here and there a solid, red-faced, burly-looking Englishman, a little pursy perhaps, who made us ashamed of ourselves and our thin and nervous countrymen,--a grandfatherly personage, at home in his greatcoat, who looked as if he might be a stage proprietor, certainly a railroad director, and knew, or had a right to know, when the cars did start.... In the meanwhile some soldiers, redcoats, belonging to the barracks near by, were turned out to be drilled. At every important point in our route the soldiers showed themselves ready for us; though they were evidently rather raw recruits here, they maneuvred far better than our soldiers; yet as usual, I heard some Yankees talk as if they were no great shakes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most foreign and picturesque structures on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are the windmills,--gray- l...ooking, octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and there resting on a cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round to face the wind.... They looked loose and slightly locomotive, like huge wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and reminded one of pictures of the Netherlands. Being on elevated ground, and high in themselves, they serve as landmarks,--for there are no tall trees, or other objects commonly, which can be seen at a distance in the horizon; though the outline of the land itself is so firm and distinct, that an insignificant cone, or even a precipice of sand, is visible at a great distance from over the sea. Sailors making the land commonly steer either by the windmills, or the meeting-houses. In the country, we are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet the meeting-house is a kind of windmill, which runs one day in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of Heaven, where another sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not plaster, we trust to make the bread of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know a guy onct married a girl like that, carried on and bawled an' made out he'd knocked her up. He married her all right an' s...he turned out to be a goddam whore and he got the siph off'n her... You take it from me, boy...Love 'em and leave 'em, that's the only way for stiffs like us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect, Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,... As broad and general as the casing air. But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »