Freud wrote a book on the essence of humor, but he didn’t know what he was talking about. Max Eastman wrote a book, The Enjoyment of Laughter, that was a much better book, but nobody bothered to read it.
Every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought.
I don’t read anything anymore. I don’t have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that’s all. I think I’ve read everything that’s worth reading.
At the time the world was all upside down. The American people were beginning to move around a lot. The old hometown ties had been pretty much broken. The theme of Farmer Takes a Wife appealed to people. Everybody was homesick. And it sold and sold and sold.
What I love about the currawongs is the way in which they appear from nowhere and, for a brief period, rule the garden’s soundscape, only to disappear as quickly as they arrived.
A lecture is an occasion when you numb one end to benefit the other.
Fate! Fate! All things pass away; Life is forever, youth is for a day. Love again if you may Before the stars are blown out of the sky And the crickets die; Babylon and Samarkand Are mud walls in a waste of sand.
Yellow melon flowers Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees; A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel Against the scoured metallic sky.