I'll come up the steps to the house and the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he'll say, "Good evening, Mr. Younger...." And I'll say, "Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?" And I'll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we'll kiss each other and she'll take my arm and we'll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you.... All the great schools in the world! And--and I'll say, all right son--it's your seventeenth birthday, what is it you've decided?... Just tell me, what it is you want to be--and you'll be it.... Whatever you want to be--Yessir! You just name it, so ... and I hand you the world!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Heaven nor hell shall impede my designs," said Manfred, advancing again to seize the princess. At that instant the portrait of hi...s grandfather ... uttered a deep sigh and heaved its breast. ... Manfred ... saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he may ...communicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations. In photography the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens in a knothole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foolish fears of what might happen. I cast them all away... Among the clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay, Among the husking of the corn, Where drowsy poppies nod Where ill thoughts die and good are born-- Out in the fields with God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Hope" is the thing with feathers-- That perches in the soul--... And sings the tunes without the words-- And never stops--at all--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Baseball is so modestly republican. The World Series is a continuation of the season by other means. Played in real towns, it is a...warded, democratically, to the city with the most wins, not the best caterers. And the players are built to human, yeoman scale. Footballers wear uniforms designed to make them mammoth and interchangeable, like the products of an oversized assembly line. Baseball outfits are meant to betray the real body underneath. In baseball's perfectly American balance of anarchy and order, uniforms are worn. But republican flannels, for God's sake, not the pads and helmets of a Nixonian Swiss guard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do you really want to know who I think started the war?... Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough t...o blow themselves off the face of the earth?... The trouble with you is you want a simple answer and there isn't any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb and counter-bombs and counter- counter-bombs. The devices outgrew us, we couldn't control them. I know. I helped build them, God help me. Some poor bloke probably looked at a radar screen and thought he saw something, knew that if he hesitated one thousandth of a second his own country would be wiped off the map, so, so he pushed a button. And, and the world went crazy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the mu...ck.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All that is necessary to do with this drink is to place it in an open saucer on the window sill and inhale deeply from across the ...room. In about eight seconds the top of the inhaler's head rises slowly and in a dignified manner until it reaches the ceiling where it floats, bumping gently up and down. The teeth then drop out and arrange themselves on the floor to spell "Portage High School, 1930" the eyes roll upward and backward, and a strange odor of burning rubber fills the room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »