And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than ...forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He began therefore to invest the fortress of my heart by a circumvallation of distant bows and respectful looks; he then entrenche...d his forces in the deep caution of never uttering an unguarded word or syllable. His designs being yet covered, he played off from several quarters a large battery of compliments. But here he found a repulse from the enemy by an absolute rejection of such fulsome praise, and this forced him back again close into his former trenches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My self ... is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic b...on vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practical, and, in a large sense, radical. So many years and ages of the gods those Ea...stern sages sat contemplating Brahm, uttering in silence the mystic "Om," being absorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being, never going out of themselves, but subsiding farther and deeper within; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely stagnant; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold by them,--not being absorbed into Brahm, but bringing Brahm down to earth and to mankind; in whom Brahm had awakened from his long sleep, and exerted himself, and the day began,--a new avatar. The Brahman had never thought to be a brother of mankind as well as a child of God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,... Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »