Quote from my reading: The Future of Mankind

“I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be—that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 353.

Quote from my reading: Age

“As I grow older, I grow calm.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 353.

Quote from my reading: Freedom

Freedom means the right to experiment.

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 346.

Quote from my reading: Niagara Falls

Comments recorded by people viewing Niagara Falls: “Roll on.” “Ceaseless thunder.” “Echoing the nothingness of men.” “Emotions of sublimity.” “Boiling waters.” “Didn’t it look grand—and you feel small?” “This is but the breathing of the great Imo! What must his anger be.” “Oh God! Great are thy works! Oh! Man! How small are thine, when placed in the same view.” “Don’t men know what they are going to write before they begin, and say it so; they and some others know, after it is written.”

American Earth, 2008, pp. 50 to 61.

Quote from my reading: Trees

“It needs but a few short minutes to bring one of these trees to the ground; the rudest boor passing along the highway may easily do the deed; but how many years must pass ere its equal stand on the same spot.” Susan F. Cooper. 1850. Rural Hours.

American Earth, 2008, p. 57.

Quote from my reading: Trees

“At length, nearly three long centuries after the Genoese had crossed the ocean, the white man came to plant a home on this spot, and it was then the great change began; the axe and the saw, the forge and the wheel, were busy from dawn to dusk, cows and swine fed in thickets whence the wild beasts had fled, while the ox and the horse drew away in chains the fallen trunks of the forest.” Susan F. Cooper. 1850. Rural Hours.

American Earth, 2008, p. 54.

Quote from my reading: The Churches of Rome

“To go into most of the churches [in Rome] is like reading some better novel than I find most novels.”

Henry James, Watch and Ward, p. 88.

Quote from my reading: Politics

“T.R. was a politician. He had to be, it was the nature of his job. Holmes hated politics, had no pleasure in maneuvering men.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 336.

Quote from my reading: Politics and Marriage

Mrs. Holmes to TR: “Washington…is full of famous men and the women they married when they were young.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 334.

Quote from my reading:Extinction of the Indian and the Buffalo

“Nature has nowhere presented more beautiful and lovely scenes, than those of the vast prairies of the West; and of man and beast, no nobler specimens than those who inhabit them—the Indian and buffalo—joint and original tenants of the soil and fugitives together from the approach of civilized man; they have fled to the great plains of the West, and there under an equal doom, they have taken up their last abode, where the race will expire and their bones will bleach together.”

George Catlin, Letters and Notes…. 1841, p. 40, in American Earth, 2008.

Quote from my reading; Personality Trait

“It was a specialty of Hubert’s that in proportion as other people grew hot, he grew cool.”

Henry James, Watch and Ward, p. 66.

Quote from my reading: Conversation

“On the whole, this interview may have passed for Nora’s first lesson in the art, indispensable to a young lady on the threshold of society, of talking for a half hour without saying anything.”

Henry James, Watch and Ward, p. 64.

Quote from my reading: Capital and Labor

“One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 305.

Quote from my reading: Government

Grover Cleveland: “He mocks the people…who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 303.

Quote from my reading: Life

From Mark Twain’s Autobiography: “A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief; the burden of pain, care, misery grows heavier year by year; at length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release in their place; it comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they have existed—a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever; then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished—to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid path through the same arid desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished—nothing!”

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Ed. Charles Neider.

Quotes from my reading: Age

“Looking around him, now in his forties, Holmes noticed the absence of long-familiar faces. His friends had by no means begun to die of old age as yet. But things seemed to happen to them, now that the first vigorous thrusts of youth were gone. People failed, dropped out of sight.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 281.

Quote from my reading: America

“By 1880, there was more than a suspicion that in spite of the hopes of the [Founding] Fathers, political liberty would never result in economic equality.”

Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen, p. 279.

Quote from my reading; Personality

“In fact, Hubert had apparently come into the world to play. He played at life altogether; he played at learning, he played at theology, he played at friendship; and it was to be conjectured…he would play with especial relish at love.”

Henry James, Watch and Ward, p. 24.

Quote from my reading: News

“…news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy.”

Thoreau, Walden.