Bokelskere.no

He used to feel that if his wife could but lie in the same coffin with him, his body would not be so insensible that the nearness of hers would not give it comfort. But now he thought of eternal solitude with gratefulness; as a release from every obligation, from every form of effort.

Lying on his old couch [...] the sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last hard bed?

The feeling that he was near the conclusion of his life was an instinctive conviction, such as we have when we awaken in the dark and know at once that it is near morning; or when we are walking across the country and suddenly know that we are near the sea.

The Professor knew, of course, that adolescence grafted a new creature into the original one, and that the complexion of a man's life was largely determined by how well or ill his original self and his nature as modified by sex rubbed on together.

The man he was now, the personality his friends knew, had begun to grow strong during adolescence, during the years when he was always consciously or unconsciously conjugating the verb «to love» [...] One thing led to another and one development brought on another, and the design of his life had been the work of this secondary social man, the lover. It had been shaped by all the penalties and responsibilities of being and having been a lover. Because there was his wife, there must be marriage and a salary. Because there was marriage, there were children. Because there were children, and fervour in the blood and brain, books were born as well as daughters. His histories, he was convinced, had no more to do with his original ego than his daughters had; they were a result of the high pressure of young manhood.

«Hold them still a moment,» said the Professor, looking down, not at the turquoises, but at the hand that held them: the muscular, many-lined palm, the long, strong fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master.

What change would have come [...] in his fine long hand with the backspringing thumb, which had never handled things that were not the symbols of ideas?

[...] into his house walked a boy who had grown up there, a boy with imagination, with the training and insight resulting from a very curious experience; who had in his pocket the secrets which old trails and stones and water-courses tell only to adolescence.

Happiness is something one can't explain. You must take my word for it. Troubles enough came afterward, but there was that summer, high and blue, a life in itself.

I left Washington at last, wiser than I came. I had no plans, I wanted nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated men pouring out of white buildings. Strange, how much more depressing they are than workmen coming out of a factory.

«They were probably wiped out, utterly exterminated, by some roving Indian tribe without culture or domestic virtues, some horde that fell upon them in their summer camp and destroyed them for their hides and clothing and weapons, or from mere love of slaughter.»

He was the sort of fellow who can do anything for somebody else, and nothing for himself. There are lots like that among workingmen. They aren't trained by success to a sort of systematic selfishness.

«Well, the habit of living with ideas grows on one, I suppose, just as inevitably as the more cheerful habit of living with various ladies. There's something to be said for both.»

«Always very different from the other college boys, wasn't he? Always had something in his voice, in his eyes... One seemed to catch glimpses of an unusual background behind his shoulders when he came into the room.»

Fellows like Outland don't carry much luggage, yet one of the things you know them by is the sumptuous generosity—and when they are gone, all you can say of them is that they departed leaving princely gifts.

Their ways parted, and both went on more cheerful than when they met.

When she began her immortal song, one felt that she was right for the part, the pure lyrics soprano that suits it best, and in her voice there was something fresh and delicate, like deep wood flowers.

Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.