I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are pleased to be called – an aristocrat.
I could do nothing but hope that Heaven would be more merciful to us all than we are to one another.
DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
Let the red dawn surmise What we shall do, When this blue starlight dies And all is through.
He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed surprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest.
Deep sadness is an artist of powers that affects people in different ways. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, shocking all the emotions to a sharper life. To another, it comes as the blow of a crushing strike.
BALLOT, n. A simple device by which a majority proves to a minority the folly of resistance. Many worthy persons of imperfect thinking apparatus believe that majorities govern through some inherent right; and minorities submit, not because they must, but because they ought.
Humor, like Death, has all seasons for his own.
From childhood to youth is eternity, from youth to manhood, a season. Age comes in a night and is incredible.
I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection.
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
All that day he travelled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
ABOMINABLE, adj. The quality of another’s opinions.
Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs.
A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him.
ADAM’S APPLE, n. A protuberance on the throat of a man, thoughtfully provided by Nature to keep the rope in place.
He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood without renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave!
He who ignores the law of probabilities challenges an adversary that is seldom beaten.
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
Oyster, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails!