I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt... it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don't know nothing about 'em. He makes 'em his own self and he's glad ...when we come tell him they hurt. why, that's a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, that's a whole everything under the sun! Next thing you know he'll be saying cats can't have kittens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth--and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergy...man try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of all cursed places under the sun, where the hungriest soul can hardly pick up a few grains of knowledge, a girls' boarding- scho...ol is the worst. They are called finishing schools, and the name tells accurately what they are. They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate. They are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move there--wide room. A woman who has been for many years at one of those places carries the mark of the beast on her till she dies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Concord, weighed anchor in this river port;... for Concord, too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for the bodies as well as the souls of men; one shore at least exempted from all duties but such as an honest man will gladly discharge. A warm, drizzling rain had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as serene and fresh as if Nature were maturing some greater scheme of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from every pore, she began to respire again more healthily than ever. So with a vigorous shove we launched our boat from the bank, while the flags and bulrushes courtesied a God-speed, and dropped silently down the stream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We did not heed the sentries at the gate, nor did they us, and what under the sun they were placed there for, unless to hinder a f...ree circulation of the air, was not apparent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the on...e who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. What ha...s been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »