As to "Don Juan," confess ... that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? I...t may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleas...antry is liable to be misunderstood--a circumstance at all times unpleasant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-g...ranted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we--because we don't question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his ...marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hideyhole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luck Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there's a message there, I don't think I want to hear it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, t...hey eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched upla...nds; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,--from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,--heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festal board,--may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady ...it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it,..." they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt; you may shine, like the sun in the temperature zones, without scorching. Here ...it is wished for; under the Line it is dreaded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English public are not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding,--between a pr...inciple and a maxim--an eternal truth and a mere conclusion from a generalization of a great number of facts.... Suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved with scarce a ray of hope of ever seeing the glorious light again. The next evening when it declines, his hopes are stronger but mixed with fear, and even at the end of 1000 years, all that a man can feel, is hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are greater than the third. This demonstrated of one triangle is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is the truth perceived at once by the reason, wholly independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »