“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old yours, the old lusts, the old despairs. That’s why you must walk up the hills do you can ride down.”
“Lust and dull slumber and the lazy hours
Have well nigh banished virtue from mankind.
Hence have man’s nature and his treacherous mind
Left their free course, enmeshed in sin’s soft bowers.
The very light of heaven hath lost its powers
Mid fading ways our loftiest dreams to find;
Men jeer at him whose footsteps are inclined
Where Helicon from dewy fountains showers.
Who seeks the laurel? who the myrtle twines?
‘Wisdom, thou goest a beggar and unclad,’
So scoffs the crowd, intent on worthless gain.
Few are the hearts that prize the poet’s lines:
Yet, friend, the more I hail thy spirit glad!
Let not the glory of thy purpose wane!”
“He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.”