Books and Ideas (22)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Tales and Sketches. Parts One, Two, Three and Four. Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Continued)

“Old Ticonderoga.” “…behold only the gray and weed-grown ruins…as peaceful in the sun as a warrior’s grave.”

“Monsieur du Miroir.” “Farewell, Monsieur du Miroir! Of you, perhaps, as of many men, it may be doubted whether you are wiser, though your whole business is REFLECTION.”

“Mrs. Bullfrog.” “It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act, in the matter of choosing wives.”

“Sunday at Home.” “The first strong idea, which the preacher utters, gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward, step-by-step, quite out of hearing of the good man’s voice.”

“The Man of Adamant.” “In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby, the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood.”

“David Swan: A Fantasy.” “There are innumerable events which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their near approach.” [While he naps by the side of the road, people come on him, but pass on, who mean him good or harm.]

“The Great Carbuncle: A Mystery of the White Mountains.” “He was one of those ill-fated mortals such as the Indians told of, whom in their early youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the passionate dream of their existence.”

“Fancy’s Show Box: A Morality.” “And it is a point of vast interest, whether the soul may contract such stains, in all their depth and flagrancy, from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon, but which, physically, have never had existence.”

“The Prophetic Pictures.” “Could the result of one, or all of our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us—some would call it fate, and hurry onward—others be swept along by their passionate desires and none be turned aside by the Prophetic Pictures.”

“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” “Before you drink [of the Fountain of Youth], my friends, said he, it would be well that, with the experience of a life time to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth.”

“A Bell’s Biography.” “By a strange coincidence, the very first duty of the sexton, after the bell had been hoisted into the belfry, was to toll the funeral knell of the donor.”

“Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man.” “A beautiful moral be indeed drawn from the early death of a sensitive recluse, who had shunned the ordinary avenues to distinction, and with splendid abilities sank into an early grave, almost unknown to mankind, and without any record save what my pen hastily leaves upon these tear-blotted pages.”

“Edward Fane’s Rosebud.” “There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy, than, while gazing at a figure of melancholy age, to re-create its youth.”

“The Toll-Gatherer’s Day: A Sketch of Transitory Life.” “ ‘Awful hot! Dreadful dusty!’ answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer.”