The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, toeven the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, th...
He did not consider public opinion to be accurate at long range.
Tell her thisAnd more,—That the king of the seasWeeps too, old, helpless man.The bustling fatesHeap his hands with corpsesUntil he stands like a childWith surplus of toys.
It was wrong to do this, said the angel.You should live like a flower,Holding malice like a puppy,Waging war like a lambkin.Not so, quoth the manWho had no fear of spirits;It is only wrong for angelsW...
A man feared that he might find an assassin;
He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.
Two or three angelsCame near to the earth.They saw a fat church.Little black streams of peopleCame and went in continually.And the angels were puzzledTo know why the people went thus,And why they stay...
When the prophet, a complacent fat man,Arrived at the mountain-topHe cried: Woe to my knowledge!I intended to see good white landsAnd bad black lands—But the scene is grey.
None of them knew the color of the sky.
A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.
A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all exis...
Sometimes, the most profound of awakenings come wrapped in the quietest of moments.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved hisrespectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he toknow that there was a soul...
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do some...
Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?
The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing. (The Black Dog)
A man said to the universe: Sir, I exist!However, replied the universe, The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he h...
There was a man with tongue of woodWho essayed to sing,And in truth it was lamentable.But there was one who heardThe clip-clapper of this tongue of woodAnd knew what the man
When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: Why? He replied: Because no one admired me.