Old-Nsa-Commonplaces

The room was very full and who were they all?

But be the ordeal sharp or long or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy—we shall ask for none.

And just as the mother feels acutely the slightest criticism of her child, so any criticism of her book even by the most negligible nitwit gave Virginia acute pains.

Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.

The air was thin and clear, stringent with wood smoke and the tang of fallen apples, sharp with the hint of early frost.

I still count the little preamble that begins as the houselights go down and the footlights glow and goes on to accompany the slow rise of the curtain on the opening scene of Carmen as the most cunningly contrived passage of descriptive music I have ever heard.

The last screw came out, the whole lock case slid down, freeing the bolt.

The inner door, which led to the passage, which in turn led to the storm door, was beside the stone.

When we choose to be the gardener, we make a deal with nature: we will abide by certain rules in growing plants, and the plants will accede to our shaping them somewhat to our needs and pleasures. We will supply water, loamy soil, a modicum of nutrients, and moderate temperature, and the impatiens will bloom brightly from May to October.

The five-foot 2-inch dynamo has piloted her career with dazzling audacity.

They were in town now. Streets, houses, buildings shuttled past.

Garish in her dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her speech, she succeeded in her lifetime in drawing upon herself the ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned.

In his youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

They snipped the ribbon in 1915, they popped the cork, Miami Beach was born.

Light fell through the colors of the stained glass beyond the altar. Through the windows ajar on the side aisle came the sweetness of blossom, of bruised grass, of river mud.

Life he saw as a ceaseless and courageous contest.

Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I?

I feel—and the anxiety is still vivid to me—that I might easily have failed before I began.

His glasses are thick, magnifying, and his eyes, puffed and swimming, seem not to miss a thing.

Now that the sad cycle of boom and bust has been tamed, now that many Americans have the means as well as the wish to diffuse prosperity and amenities throughout the community, the challenges to public policy have taken a new turn.

Bad as this article was, and time has proved it to be utter nonsense, the second article he wrote was probably even worse, and why I printed it I don’t recall.

He made the emperor laugh and the horse couldn’t better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends.

And Giovanni fell—back into the room, the streets, the world, into the presence and the shadow of death.

It was all dry: all withered: all spent.

What went unsaid, but clearly implied, was that they had a right but not a reason to be proud of me.