"In great misfortunes," he told himself, "people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within ...one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in." Falling out, for him, seemed to mean falling out of all domestic and social relations, out of his place in the human family, indeed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat and ...potatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinar...y travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have read that on some exposed place in the city of Geneva, they have fixed a brazen indicator for the use of travelers, with t...he names of the mountain summits in the horizon marked upon it.... It stands there a piece of mute brass, that seems nevertheless to know in what vicinity it is: and there perchance it will stand, when the nation that placed it there has passed away, still in sympathy with the mountains, forever discriminating in the desert. So, we may say, stands this man, pointing as long as he lives, in obedience to some spiritual magnetism, to the summits in the historical horizon, for the guidance of his fellows.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's so lonely here. Like we were the only two people left in the whole world. Maybe we are. Maybe when we get back to shore every...body else will have disappeared. I'd like that, wouldn't you?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Charles Eastman: There's always a place at the plant for a boy like that. Mrs. Eastman: But what are we going to do about him... socially? Earl Eastman: That's easy. We can all leave town.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world,--this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make... me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next to me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and ...seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »