A Quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne
That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
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Everyday, everywhere our children spread their dreams beneath our feet and we should tread softly.
A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.
The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.
The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let's not try to be witty, but record the worst of human viciousness we've seen without changing one word. When that's done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That's work enough for a lifetime.
The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface .
How thin is the crust of order over the fires of human appetite and the lust for naked power.
Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.
The stage floor was a stage of thin ice for me to tread. To hold my own or to sink through and die, never to be remembered.
It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.
For to the extent that we act toward others as we feel we might, we open ourselves to their inner reality, and their needs and aspirations seem so important to us as our own. We hope their hopes will be fulfilled and need to see their needs satisfied. Their happiness makes us happy, and we are pained to see them hurt. We resonate with them and delight in their prosperity.
We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree.
This was the void. Not blackness, not nothingness. This was what lay beneath the thinly painted scrim of reality.
I'm a thin-crust pizza guy. I respect people who like thick crust, but in my view it's mostly bread.
The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break-the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it.
I'm
gonna spread out
over America
intrude
my proud blackness
all
over the place.
Amid all change, we desire something permanent; amid all variety, something stable; amid all progress, some central unity of life; something which deepens as we ascend; which roots itself as we advance; which grows more and more tenacious of the old, while becoming more and more open to the new.
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