But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft.

for he does not postpone his life, but lives already

We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

Woden

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

prate

Truth and Right

It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being?

Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.

Greatness appeals to the future.

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Why drag about this corpse of your memory

feminine rage

the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us.

I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing?

Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor?

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this;

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner,

Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

What pretty oracles

Chaos and the Dark

invalids

It is a deliverance which does not deliver.

A man is relieved and gay

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.

spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

trumpets of the Last Judgment

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

Power

she-wolf’s teat

“Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late.

Ne te quaesiveris extra

without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle

Rip’s daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back.

“Oh, she, too, had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler.”

He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly changed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, General Washington.

from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes; all this was strange and incomprehensible.

A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed. “My very dog,” sighed Rip, “has forgotten me!”

Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and small, piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose

what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain,

the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys

Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on. A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

but what courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ear about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

His son Rip promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in a pair of his father’s cast-off breeches, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody.

He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached.

(may he rest in peace!)

Dutch colonists

At the foot of these fairy mountains

That we must rely on God Himself, and our whole dependance must be upon Him.

It is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock. Instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf.

benevolence

“Money answers all things”

hath set us in the midst of tender-hearted and compassionate Christians.

My sister’s son was redeemed for four pounds

through the valley of the shadow of death

(my children being gone, I could not tell whither)

And as we were riding along (God is the wise disposer of all things)

Mr. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown

But the Lord knows them all by name.

but now as much with pitiful, tender-hearted and compassionate Christians.

joy to see such a lovely sight, so many Christians together

God’s power is as great now, and as sufficient to save, as when He preserved Daniel in the lion’s den; or the three children in the fiery furnace.

their hearts sigh heaven-ward

(with their black faces)

But now our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord, have so offended Him, that instead of turning His hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the whole land.

They would pick up old bones, and cut them to pieces at the joints, and if they were full of worms and maggots, they would scald them over the fire to make the vermine come out, and then boil them, and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them.

Though many times they would eat that, that a hog or a dog would hardly touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people.

I can but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country. They could go in great numbers over, but the English must stop. God had an over-ruling hand in all those things.

I told them, they had as good knock me in head as starve me to death.

Then I took it of the child, and eat it myself, and savory it was to my taste.

him about the welfare of my husband. He told me he saw him such a time in the Bay, and he was well, but very melancholy

yelping

streams of Scripture

my master himself was gone

barbarous heathens

But the Lord upheld my Spirit, under this discouragement; and I considered their horrible addictedness to lying, and that there is not one of them that makes the least conscience of speaking of truth.

Here one asked me to make a shirt for her papoose, for which she gave me a mess of broth, which was thickened with meal made of the bark of a tree, and to make it the better, she had put into it about a handful of peas, and a few roasted ground nuts.

trumpery

company (they said)

I found six acorns, and two chestnuts, which were some refreshment to me.

insolency

hoping the redemption

snatched it hastily out of my hand, and threw it out of doors

papoose

Nux

It seems to be a bait the devil lays to make men lose their precious time.

: Yet I answered, they would kill me. “No,” said he, “none will hurt you.” Then came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me, and another gave me half a pint of peas; which was more worth than many bushels at another time.

And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen.

and yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash;

But the Lord helped me still to go on reading

One of the Indians that came from Medfield fight, had brought some plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket.

They began their din about a mile before they came to us. By their noise and hooping they signified how many they had destroyed (which was at that time twenty-three).

About two hours in the night, my sweet babe like a lamb departed this life on Feb. 18, 1675.

sometimes one Indian would come and tell me one hour that “your master will knock your child in the head,” and then a second, and then a third, “your master will quickly knock your child in the head.”

it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of His presence forever.

Oh the number of pagans (now merciless enemies)

Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

and having no Christian friend near me

But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along, that I might see more of His power

which they, like inhumane creatures, laughed, and rejoiced to see it,

but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail.

Those seven that were killed at Lancaster the summer before upon a Sabbath day

bespeaking compassion

And as miserable was the waste that was there made of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, calves, lambs, roasting pigs, and fowl (which they had plundered in the town), some roasting, some lying and burning, and some boiling to feed our merciless enemies

lively resemblance of hell

yelling of those black creatures

dolefulest

(deserted by the English before, for fear of the Indians)

barbarous creatures

a free resource for all.

The goal is to draw the reader in

And while American literature is ever-changing

I know that all sorts of excuses will run through your mind for not partaking of it, but if you wish to learn of something good, try this.

I tried all the Indian doctors and then I tried all of the white man’s medicines, but they were of no avail.

The end of this tail was like a spear. “O, my God! I am surely going to die now,” I thought. Then I looked again in another direction and I saw a man with horns and long claws and with a spear in his hand.

We ate it and I also did. It was the middle of the night when I got frightened, for a live thing seemed to have entered me.

evenly cut tufts of deer hair on the end and at intervals along its length

These, for the most part, consist of speeches by people in the audience and the reading and explanation of parts of the Bible. After the peyote has begun to have an appreciable effect, however, the ceremony consists exclusively of a repetition of the ritualistic unit and confessions.

The ceremony is generally held in a building called by the Peyote worshipers a church