People From Maine

"We are young And we are friends of time."

"The gods are growing old; The stars are singing Golden hair to gray Green leaf to yellow leaf,—or chlorophyl To xanthophyl, to be more scientific."

"You have made The cement of your churches out of tears And ashes, and the fabric will not stand."

"He was himself and he had lost the speed He started with, and he was left behind."

"The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds."

"There is a grim and ghastly humor -- the humor that is born of a pathetic philosophy -- which now and then strikes me in reading the bright and keen-witted work of our American paragraphers. It is a humor that may be crystallized by hunger and sorrow and tears. It is not found elsewhere as it is in America. It is out of the question in England, because an Englishman cannot poke fun at himself. He cannot joke about an empty flour-barrel. We can: especially if by doing it we may swap the joke for another barrel of flour. We can never be a nation of snobs so long as we are willing to poke fun at ourselves."

""Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself."

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models...Margaret Fuller and Sarah Orne Jewett acknowledged their indebtedness to Madame de Staël, the author of Corinne...The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"The nineteenth-century poet and novelist Sarah Orne Jewett lived for thirty years with Annie Fields in what was, in that century, called a Boston Marriage. It was considered a respectable arrangement, and friends and community acknowledged the life-companion relationship as a genuine article of devotion. When Annie Fields, however, intended to publish the letters between her and Jewett in the 1920s and after the latter's death, her close friend Mark De Wolfe Howe counseled against inclusion of any mention of their love for each other. This meant deleting four-fifths of the correspondence. Howe's objections stemmed from his fear of accusations of "perversity" against his friend in the sexually charged world of Freudian analysis. Faderman concludes that while the love between Jewett and Fields "was common and appropriate behavior in the century in which the two women had spent most of their lives (and Howe himself saw it as common and appropriate at the time)... it suddenly became "abnormal" in a twentieth century context, although nothing about the nature of the relationship had changed.""

"When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am."

"So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end."

"The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back."

"'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes."

"In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness."

"Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of."

"Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading."

"It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out."

"Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading."

"The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man."

"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."

"Dear robin," said this sad young flower, "Perhaps you'd not mind trying To find a nice white frill for me, Some day when you are flying?" "You silly thing!" the robin said; "I think you must be crazy! I'd rather be my honest self Than any made-up daisy. "You're nicer in your own bright gown, The little children love you; Be the best buttercup you can, And think no flower above you. "Though swallows leave me out of sight, We'd better keep our places; Perhaps the world would all go wrong With one too many daisies. "Look bravely up into the sky, And be content with knowing That God wished for a buttercup Just here, where you are growing."

"The warm sun kissed the earth To consecrate thy birth, And from his close embrace Thy radiant face Sprang into sight, A blossoming delight."

"A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return."

"Your patience may have long to wait, Whether in little things or great, But all good luck, you soon will learn, Must come to those who nobly earn. Who hunts the hay-field over Will find the four-leaved clover."

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

"Darwin's] triumph has won for us a common height from which we see the whole world of living beings as well as all inorganic nature; phenomena of every order we now regard as expressions of natural causes. The supernatural has no longer a standing is science; it has vanished like a dream, and the halls consecrated to its thraldom of the intellect are becoming radiant with a more cheerful faith."

"The theory community, myself included - became rather troubled about the particle."

"You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to teach physics at MIT. The physics majors at MIT are there because they want to be there. Their love of physics is infectious...I've likened it to teaching art history in Rome."

"I feel I may be controversial in this, but I think that wisdom doesn't count for a lot in theoretical physics. It’s not like history and literature, where you accumulate a broader and broader world view. It’s not a question of energy; I have plenty of energy. I just wrote—just finished writing this massive book...I think most theoretical physicists do their best work when they're young, because they see problems fresh for the first time."

"Everyone agreed that this is a song all Americans should be able to sing. It was a hands-down favorite among teachers. And I've talked with kids in elementary and high schools about it, too. Any youngster can tell you what this song means: Simplicity is sometimes better than complexity, and we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously."

"'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.'When true simplicity is gain'd To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd, To turn, turn will be our delight 'Till by turning, turning we come round right."

"The man who wrote this claimed it came to him by divine inspiration, and I truly believe that might have been the case. This may be the perfect piece of music. I've sung it close to 15,000 times over the years, and I never get tired of it."

"I don’t think he was musically trained, as far as I can tell from my research. There isn’t a lot of background material to find on this question, but I do believe that he picked up music as it was passed to him through the community. They felt it was a communal gift to be able to write music, a gift from God. They wrote about the experience as having inspirationally received a song."

"The Music Educators National Conference — the professional organization for American music teachers — named it among a handful of songs that every American should know. Teachers ranked it right up there with the "National Anthem," "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Home on the Range.""

"N.B. This is rote sarcastikul."

"Hearto4, as I hav numerously obsarved, I have abstrained from having any sentimunts or principles, my pollertics, like my religion, bein of a exceedin accommodatin character. But the fack can't be no longer disgised that a Krysis is onto us, & I feel it's my dooty to accept your invite for one consecutive nite only."

"...their eyes sparkled like diminds, their cheeks was like roses, and they was charmin enuff to make a man throw stuns at his granmother, if they axed him to."

"I now bid you a welcome adoo."

"They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, etc., make it prof'tible cherishin' it."

"The sun has a right to "set" where it wants to, and so, I may add, has a hen."

"Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrer [sic] money to do it with."

"He is dreadfully married. "He's the most married man I ever saw in my life.""

"I am not a politician, and my other habits are good, also."

"Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?"

"The Puritans nobly fled from a land of despotism to a land of freedim, where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but could prevent everybody else from enjoyin his."

"The prevailin' weakness of most public men is to Slop over. G. Washington never slopt over."

"My wife is one of the best wimin on this continent, altho' she isn't always gentle as a lamb, with mint sauce."

"The female woman is one of the greatest institooshuns of which this land can boste."

"Yes; there was an oration. We have a passion for oratory in America—political oratory chiefly. Our political orators never lose a chance to "express their views." They will do it. You cannot stop them.There was an execution in Ohio one day, and the Sheriff, before placing the rope round the murderer's neck, asked him if he had any remarks to make?"If he hasn't," said a well-known local orator, pushing his way rapidly through the dense crowd to the gallows—"if our ill-starred feller-citizen don't feel inclined to make a speech and is in no hurry, I should like to avail myself of the present occasion to make some remarks on the necessity of a new protective tariff!""

"Did you ever have the measels, and if so, how many?"