Todd

“We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. Two”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up and all the cottage warm;”
― Robert Browning

“...in Petushki the jasmine never stops blooming and the birds always sing...”
― Venedikt Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line

“Yet a sailor's life is at best, but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea