According to the compass, the Lord only knew where I was
Business of civilization to tame or kill
Canopy of mosquitoes
Caricature of a road
Compass, which was made near Greenwich, was wrong
Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks
Everlasting dress-parade of our civilization
Grand intentions and weak vocabulary
How lightly past hardship sits upon us!
I hain't no business here; but here I be!
Kept its distance, as only a mountain can
Man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
Marriage is mostly for discipline
Misery, unheroic and humiliating
Near-sighted man, whose glasses the rain rendered useless
No conceit like that of isolation
No nervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there
Not lost, but gone before
Posthumous fear
Procession of unattainable meals stretched before me
Sense to shun the doctor; to lie down in some safe place
Solitude and every desirable discomfort
Stumbled against an ill-placed tree
Suffering when unaccompanied by resignation
Ten times harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it
There is an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods
BADDECK
Best part of going to sea is keeping close to the shore
Can leave it without regret
Dependent upon imagination and memory
Great part of the enjoyment of life
Luxury of his romantic grief
Picturesque sort of dilapidation
Rest is never complete—unless he can see somebody else at work
Won't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't
BACKLOG STUDIES
A good many things have gone out with the fire on the hearth
Abatement of a snow-storm that grows to exceptional magnitude
Anywhere a happier home than ours? I am glad of it!
Associate ourselves to make everybody else behave as we do.
Chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call the temperate zone
Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables
Crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife poke the fire
Don't know what success is
Each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance
Enjoyed poor health
Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance
Fallen into the days of conformity
Few people know how to make a wood-fire
Finding the world disagreeable to themselves
Have almost succeeded in excluding pure air
Just as good as the real
Lived himself out of the world
Long score of personal flattery to pay off
Not half so reasonable as my prejudices
Pathos overcomes one's sense of the absurdity of such people
Permit the freedom of silence
Poetical reputation of the North American Indian
Point of breeding never to speak of anything in your house
Reformers manage to look out for themselves tolerably well
Refuge of mediocrity
Rest beyond the grave will not be much change for him
Said, or if I have not, I say it again
Severe attack of spiritism
Shares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life
Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire
Some men you always prefer to have on your left hand
Sort of busy idleness among men
There are no impossibilities to youth and inexperience
Things are apt to remain pretty much the same
Think the world they live in is the central one
To-day is like yesterday,
Usual effect of an anecdote on conversation
Women know how to win by losing
World owes them a living because they are philanthropists
SUMMER IN A GARDEN
But I found him, one Sunday morning,—a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow at the foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in that abominable voice. I told the man that I could not have the cow in the grounds. He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away. I asked him to clear out. The man, who is a French sympathizer from the Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly. He said he wasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't make me the least trouble in the world. I reminded him that he had been told again and again not to come here; that he might have all the grass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises. The imperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept on feeding his cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pastures new, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: it is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other side. The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which I shall recall when I keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if anybody wants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the owner little; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink it are on the straight road to lunacy.
Moral Truth.—I have no doubt that grapes taste best in other people's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to be generous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity. Philosophical Observation.—Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall know them.
Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on the south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnuts on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, I see, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer there. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas: the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all summer. I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulate myself that we are ready for winter. For the winter-garden I have no responsibility: Polly has entire charge of it. I am only required to keep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for the death of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that into the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all the work. We never relinquish that theory.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted them in what are called "Early Rose,"—the rows a little less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. I shall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. I think they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.
Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so. She shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put in a few modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed the seeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or four short rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all came up,—came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a Chinese village. Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is, pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes a conscientious man some time to decide which are the best and healthiest plants to spare. After all, I spared too many. That is the great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in the next): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much. The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips, because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainder to grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for the plants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point: if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers, it is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so late in the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote part of the garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never even winks, as I can see. The tender blades were scarcely out of the ground when she sent a small black fly, which seemed to have been born and held in reserve for this purpose,—to cut the leaves. They speedily made lace-work of the whole bed. Thus everything appears to have its special enemy,—except, perhaps, p——y: nothing ever troubles that.
If you wish to read the entire context of any of these quotations, select a short segment and copy it into your clipboard memory—then open the following eBook and paste the phrase into your computer's find or search operation.
[ The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner]
These quotations were collected from the works of Charles Dudley Warner by [David Widger] while preparing etexts for Project Gutenberg. Comments and suggestions will be most welcome.