“I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.”
―
―
“The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir'. It just happens.”
― Boy's Life
― Boy's Life
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
― The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
― The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.
...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
Stephen’s 2023 Year in Books
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